A multi-institutional assessment of eye lens dose in nuclear medicine clinics

The endeavor was to measure the lens dose of actively working staff in nuclear medicine departments.

This study was accomplished in three nuclear medicine sites. A total of 23 workers in nuclear medicine joined this work. Among them are 6 SPECT/ CT technologists, 6 PET/CT technologists, 3 PET/MRI technologists, 5 radiopharmacists, 2 physicists, and 1 physician. EXTDOSE Hp(3) OSL dosimeter with tissue equivalent beryllium-oxide crystal was used for lens dose measurement. All participants were asked to wear the lens dosimeter for 2 months as near to the eye level as possible.

Pooling the dose measures together yielded an average lens dose of 1.48 ± 0.77 mSv for the radiopharmacy team, 1.44 ± 0.26 for PET/ CT technologists, 0.86 ± 0.45 mSv for SPECT/ CT technologists, 0.38 mSv for the sole physician administered 177Lu, and 0.45 ± 0.02 mSv for the physicists conducting 131I therapy. Moreover, normalizing the lens dose to the labeled activity led to a lens dose of 2.2 ± 1.4 µSv/GBq for the radiopharmacy team. Likewise, per administered activity: 23.8 ± 7.3 µSv/GBq for PET/CT and PET/MRI technologists, 12.2 ± 10.5 µSv/GBq 99mTc for SPECT/CT technologists, 6.0 ± 0.81 µSv/GBq 131I for physicists, and 3.0 µSv/GBq 177Lu for the physician.

It was deduced that the annual occupational lens dose of the nuclear medicine workers varied from 2.3 to 11.5 mSv/year; however, one radiopharmacist projected annual lens dose as close to the lens equivalent dose limit (20 mSv/year) as 17.9 mSv.