Quality assurance: a device to check and to draw up inventory of low dose rate iridium 192 sources

International organizations (Council of the European Communities 1988, I.C.R.P. 1985, W.H.O. 1988 ...) recommend to set a program of quality assurance. We have develop such a program in our hospital summarized below: In order to make quality assurance easy for 192Ir sources which present particular problems (individual identification impossible, wires to be check before and after cut, inventory ...), we have contributed to the development of a computer program associated to a linear activimeter Kermascan (Cis-Bio International). We present the different dosimetric steps which allow to evaluate automatically the length of cut wires, the verification of each source before and after each clinical use (comparison of length before and after each loading), daily inventory of cut or non cut wires, selection of wires according with criteria such as type, length or strength, management of wires batches (order form, receipt, stock movements, date of source change ...)