Radiation Doses from Administered Radio-nuclides

Abstract

When planning the administration of radio-nuclides for medical purposes it is important to estimate the radiation doses which will be received by several organs of the body as well as that received by the target organ. In order to made this estimate for any radio-nuclide, information is required about its uptake and retention in different organs of the body following its administration to the patient and about the amount of energy absorbed in those organs following each of its disintegrations. Average values for these parameters for adult males are available in the Report of Committee II of the International Commission of Radiological Protection. This information has been used to compute values of the average radiation doses received by several organs of adult males following the ingestion or injection of 1μc of most of the radio-nuclides at present used in hospitals. Details of the method of calculation and of the approximations employed are discussed so that the values of the radiation doses derived for adult males may be modified for other individuals, for example females and children, whenever the relevant metabolic data are available. Values of the parameters required in the calculation and of the radiation doses for adult males are tabulated.