S ources of radiation exposure to the U.S. population are derived from five broad categories: (a) ubiquitous background radiation (including radon); (b) medical procedures in patients; (c) consumer products or activities involving radiation sources; (d) industrial, security, medical, educational, and research radiation sources; and (e) occupational sources in specific categories of workers. Comprehensive assessments of the frequency and associated doses from radiologic and nuclear medicine procedures are conducted only rarely. In the United States, assessments of diagnostic radiologic procedures were conducted in 1964 (1), 1970 (2), and 1980 (3) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Mettler et al (4). Beginning about 1980, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the Food and Drug Administration conducted more focused surveys, which included dosimetry data for selected radiologic procedures. The last comprehensive estimates of uses of medical radiation in the United States were performed more than 10 years ago and were published in 2009 by Mettler et al (5) and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) in its Report 160 (6) using data

Sufficient data exist to suggest possible initial benchmarks for patient radiation dose for certain interventional cardiology procedures in the U.S. Our data suggest that patient radiation dose in these procedures is not optimized in U.S. practice.

Analysis of the two data sets (ADS and FDS) and of the percent of instances that exceed the SRDL provides a means for the facility to better manage radiation dose (and therefore both deterministic and stochastic radiation risk) to the patient during FGI procedures.

Mammography quality is better today than it has been at any other time in the United States. With the exception of radiation dose. Canadian technical measures of performance are comparable to measures before MQSA in the United States.

Spatial resolution for fluoroscopy is adequate for most of the facilities surveyed, but a substantial proportion of facilities could not visualize low-contrast test objects, which strongly suggests image quality problems.