Real-time skin dose Radiation Monitoring during Coronary Angiography

The collective dose of radiation used in medical investigations and procedures has increased by greater than 700% between 1980 and 2006 [1]. Consequently the use of ionizing radiation has developed into an important, yet potentially avoidable, public health threat [2] that deserves considerable attention. This is particularly the case in adult cardiology patients where coronary angiography represents 12% of all radiological procedures but contributes a disproportionate ≈ 48% of their total collective dose [3]. Therefore, coronary angiography and intervention is becoming an increasingly important lifetime source of radiation exposure for patients [4]. Radiation exposure is also an important issue for the proceduralist with an interventional cardiologist exposed to 2-3 times higher radiation per year than that of a radiologist [5,6].