Researchers are trying to assess and reduce the amount of radiation that Australian cancer patients are currently exposed to.
According to lead researcher John Kenny a senior medical physicist with Premion, a Queensland radiation oncology service, there has been a rise in radiation exposure to cancer patients parallel to the development of new radiographic imaging techniques all of which use X rays.
He said although each exposure was small, there was a accumulation of radiation exposure at end of therapy.
He said, “Image-guided radiation therapy gives brilliant images of the patient to use to target the treatment dose on the cancer but it also uses X-rays…We'd like to reduce the amount of radiation used overall so there is less chance of adverse effects on the patient…We need to find that break point where we've got the accuracy we need with the minimum dose (of radiation).”
This study is one of the first of its kind to detect the total amount of radiation exposure and means to reduce it. This will be a year long study funded by The Wesley Research Institute.
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