Can exposure to low doses of radiation in medical imaging tests lead to cancer?
A new initiative at the National Institutes of Health aims to find out.
Doctors at the N.I.H. Will keep detailed notes about radiation exposure from C.T. And pet scans for each patient, and enter the data into electronic medical records.
Vendors who make imaging equipment will be required to provide a way to measure radiation doses and ensure that this exposure can be tracked by patients in their personal health records.
"While these steps themselves are not sufficient to allow population-based assessment of cancer risk from low-dose radiation, they are nonetheless necessary to begin a data set for this determination" said the lead researcher.
Researchers feel it's important to begin the research project because more and more americans are getting medical imaging.
This action by the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center is detailed in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
