Evaluation of dose to patients in nuclear medicine

Exposure to ionising radiation is known to cause deleterious biological effects in the individual exposed. One of the most important influencing factor that determines the severity or probability of the radiation effect is the radiation dose. In any nuclear medicine procedure, one has to properly assess the benefits and risks from the given procedure, ensuring that the benefits accured from the procedure outweigh the radiation related risks. This assessment can only be performed provided one knows the radiation dose delivered to the patient from a particular procedure. In nuclear medicine, it is impossible to estimate the radiation dose directly using any kind of radiation detector system. Instead, the dose is evaluated using a variety of physical and biological data and mathematical equations specially developed for this purpose