Medical scan makers to install radiation controls

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By Associated Press

Summary

A trade group says manufacturers of high-tech medical scanners will begin installing safety controls to prevent patients from receiving excessive radiation.

Story Published: Feb 25, 2010 at 10:00 AM PST

Story Updated: Feb 25, 2010 at 10:00 AM PST

Medical scan makers to install radiation controls

Michael Gomez, a nuclear medicine technologist, talks to a patient before a positron emission tomography cat scan, or PET-CT, at River Radiology in Kingston, N.Y.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A trade group says manufacturers of high-tech medical scanners will begin installing safety controls to prevent patients from receiving excessive radiation.

The dosing checks, which are to be installed before the end of the year, will alert machine operators whenever the machine's settings exceed recommended levels. Each hospital and clinic will be able to preset the levels for their machines.

The announcement from the medical imaging industry's trade association comes two weeks after the Food and Drug Administration said it would begin working to prevent injury caused by excessive radiation scanning.

The agency says the average American's total radiation exposure has nearly doubled in the last three decades, largely due to next-generation imaging tests.

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