DOSE TO THE FEMALE BREAST FROM NUCLEAR MEDICINE AND DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY

There has been increased concern about radiation dose to the female breasts, with approximately 200,000 new breast cancers being diagnosed each year in the United States. The unprecedented increase in the use of radiologic exams on younger women has also raised some additional concerns about how procedures are performed. The objective of this paper is to provide an insight into how breast dose is calculated in nuclear medicine, mammography and computed tomography and provide a comparison amongst these three modalities if any. Estimated calculations are also provided from use of attenuation correction methods used in SPECT/PET and SPECT-CT/PET-CT. The special case of lactating breast in nuclear medicine is also addressed, in addition to the radiopharmaceutical that are distributed in the breast. Breast doses are compared from all the modalities to determine whether or not breast doses from different modalities are additive. Finally methods of reducing doses in nuclear medicine and diagnostic radiology are discussed