The MIRD Perspective 1999

Abstract

iluclear medicine procedures provide valuable diagnostic information and noninvasive approaches to therapy. However, as with any medical procedure, the risks and benefits must be weighed. The radiation absorbed dose is an essential part of assessing the risk from diagnostic radiologie procedures and predicting efficacy in radiation therapy. The generalized MIRD schema was formulated to facilitate the calculation of radiation absorbed dose from distributed sources of radioactivity (I). This article provides a historical account of the events leading to the development of the MIRD schema, a concise presentation of the formalism and its early application to organ dosimetry as elaborated in MIRD Pamphlet No. 11 (2) and a discussion on the general applicability of the formalism for dosimetry at all spatial levels ranging from organ to cellular dimensions. This article also introduces four new MIRD Pamphlets that will appear in upcoming issues of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine: MIRD Pamphlet No. 14 Revised: A Dynamic Urinary Bladder Model for Radiation Dose Calculations (3); MIRD Pamphlet No. 15: Radionuclide S Values in a Revised Dosimetrie Model of the Adult Head and Brain (4); MIRD Pamphlet No. 16: Techniques for Quantitative Radiopharmaceutical Biodistribution Data Acquisition and Analysis for Use in Human Radiation Dose Estimates (5); and MIRD Pamphlet No. 17: The Dosim etry of Nonuniform Activity Distributions—Radionuclide S Values at the Voxel Level (6). These pamphlets are part of the MIRD Committee's ongoing efforts to provide new tools for a