Ionizing radiation metrology at the service of health: quality control of radiopharmaceutical dose calibrators in nuclear medicine unit -accurarcy, reproducibility and linearity tests-

Abstract

Ensuring the effective use of a dose calibrator used for the practice of nuclear medicine, and the injection of the correct dose to the patient is the subject of a long traceable calibration chain, which serves to establish the relationship between the values of the activity indicated by the dose calibrator and the activity corresponding to ISO 2919 certified sealed sources whose activity is known with an uncertainty of less than 1 %. Our calibration program consists in carrying out various quality control on the CRC 55TR activimeter, namely the daily control which is carried out in the absence of any radioactive source, then the fidelity control carried out by a source of 37Cs and a source of 60Co, then the reproducibility check performed with a 137Cs source, and finally the linearity check performed with a 99mTc source. In our case the results obtained from the specific tests used to verify the proper functioning of the Capintec CRC 55tR activimeter in a nuclear medicine service in Morocco, shows an agreement with international standards so that the measurement of activities is done with significant results, in addition, to guarantee the metrological quality of the measurements delivered, Our laboratory registers in an accreditation process according to ISO 17025.

Keywords

• nuclear medicine
• quality control
• activimeter
• ionization
• radiation
• radiation protection