**4. Application of radiation in medicine and some other fields**

The principal objectives of radiation protection are to ensure adequate safety of persons against the harmful effects of radiation. This includes radiation workers, patients as well as members of the public. In addition, the satisfactory

#### **Figure 9.**

*Relations between various radiation protection quantities used to assess stochastic and deterministic effects following the external exposure (based on [12]).*

#### **Figure 10.**

*Quantities characterizing personal exposure from the intake of radioactive material or from skin contamination (based on [12]).*

protection of the environment, especially from its radioactive contamination, should also be taken into account. Special attention should be paid to the security of strong radioactive sources since they may be misused for terrorist and other malevolent actions.

There is no debt that exposure to radiation may cause severe hazards to workers, members of the general public, as well as to patients if the application of radiation sources is not under strict control during all their cycles, including production, transport, storage, and decommissioning. It is worth emphasizing the main role of safety and security in radiation protection. As has already been indicated above, *radiation safety* includes any operation aimed at the protection of persons against radiation emitted by the sources, while the *radiation (nuclear) security* role consists of protecting and securing radiation sources and nuclear installations against any attempt to handle or approach them by unauthorized persons including terrorists who may deliberately misuse radiation sources for malevolent actions.

Radiation and nuclear applications proved to be extremely beneficial and effective in many branches of technologies, especially in medicine, industry, and science. In a number of cases, these methods are the only feasible way to solve a problem or task. This applies to various medical fields where especially in diagnostic radiology. It would be impossible to carry out many examinations without a radiation generator or special radioactive materials (radiopharmaceuticals).

There are three main uses of radiation in medicine:

• *Diagnostic radiology* – based on photons produced by X-ray machines to obtain information from inside the patient's body. This includes conventional radiography (including fluoroscopy), computed tomography (CT), and some other modality specific to the examination purpose).

*Basic Radiation Protection for the Safe Use of Radiation and Nuclear Technologies DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108379*


Ensuring appropriate radiation protection of workers, patients, and other persons potentially affected by medical applications (e.g., members of the household of patients treated by radiopharmaceuticals) is one of the most important tasks. This is becoming more and more important at present, and it will be even more imperative in the future. The number and variety of methods used in medicine involving radiation are going continuously up. Moreover, some new diagnostic methods, especially CT modalities, are characterized by relatively high doses, which results in an increased radiation burden on the population. The situation can be illustrated by a comparison of exposure of members of the public receiving about 30–40 years ago and in some recent years (**Figure 11**). Although the data are from the USA, the situation is becoming similar in many industrialized countries, where medical exposure is responsible for more than 50% of the total annual effective dose.

Medical applications of radiation sources and radionuclides are contributing to the total exposure of the population up to 50% of the total exposure, and this is why ensuring appropriate control of dose in this field is most important. We cannot neglect, however, other areas where these technologies are used. This includes especially industrial applications where exposures are relatively low and practically always below set limits, but in the case of accidents or any other emergency, the consequences may be fatal. One has to learn lessons from such nuclear accidents as happened in Chornobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011. The relevant comparison chart is shown in **Figure 12** (based on [14]).

An overview of a variety of applications of various methods and principles of radiation and nuclear technologies in the industry is presented in **Figure 13** (based on [15]).

#### **Figure 11.**

*Average annual effective dose/person received in 1980 (left panel) and 2006 (right panel) in the United States (based on [13]).*


#### **Figure 12.**

*Difference between Chornobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents.*

### **Figure 13.**

*Applications of radiotracer and radionuclide techniques in the industry.*

*Basic Radiation Protection for the Safe Use of Radiation and Nuclear Technologies DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108379*
