ISO/TC 85/SC 2/WG 22 - Dosimetry and related protocols in medical applications of ionizing radiation

This document addresses aspects of management of solid biomedical radioactive waste from its generation in nuclear medicine facilities to final clearance and disposal, as well as the manner to establish an effective program for biomedical radioactive waste management. Liquid and gaseous wastes are excluded from the scope of the document, but solid waste includes spent and surplus solutions of radionuclides contained in vials, tubes or syringes. Therefore, this document should be useful for any nuclear medicine facilities dealing with in vivo medical applications of radionuclides and consequently with the waste associated with such applications. This document provides a list of the main radionuclides used in nuclear medicine facilities and their main physical characteristics, as well as the guidance to write a radioactive waste management program for their sorting, collection, packaging and labelling, radioactivity surveys and decay storage, clearance levels, and transportation, if necessary, until their ultimate disposal or discharge. This document may also be useful as guidance for regulatory bodies.

ISO 21439:2009 specifies methods for the determination of absorbed-dose distributions in water or tissue that are required prior to initiating procedures for the application of beta radiation in ophthalmic tumour and intravascular brachytherapy]. Recommendations are given for beta-radiation source calibration, dosemetry measurements, dose calculation, dosemetric quality assurance, as well as for beta-radiation brachytherapy treatment planning. Guidance is also given for estimating the uncertainty of the absorbed dose to water. ISO 21439:2009 is applicable to “sealed” radioactive sources, such as plane and concave surface sources, source trains of single seeds, line sources, shell and volume sources, for which only the beta radiation emitted is of therapeutic relevance. The standardization of procedures in clinical dosemetry described in ISO 21439:2009 serves as a basis for the reliable application of beta-radiation brachytherapy. The specific dosemetric methods described in ISO 21439:2009 apply to sources for the curative treatment of ophthalmic disease, for intravascular brachytherapy treatment, for overcoming the problem of restenosis and for other clinical applications using beta radiation. ISO 21439:2009 is geared towards organizations wishing to establish reference methods in dosemetry aiming at clinical demands for an appropriately small uncertainty of the delivered dose. ISO 21439:2009 does not exclude the possibility that there can be other methods leading to the same or smaller measurement uncertainties.

ISO 28057:2014 describes rules for the procedures, applications, and systems of thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD) for dose measurements according to the probe method. It is particularly applicable to solid "TL detectors", i.e. rods, chips, and microcubes, made from LiF:Mg,Ti or LiF:Mg,Cu,P in crystalline or polycrystalline form. The probe method encompasses the arrangement, particularly in a water phantom or in a tissue-equivalent phantom, of single TL detectors or of "TL probes", i.e. sets of TL detectors arranged in thin-walled polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) casings. The purpose of these rules is to guarantee the reliability and the accuracy indispensable in clinical dosimetry when applied on or in the patient or phantom. ISO 28057:2014 applies to dosimetry in teletherapy with both photon radiation from 20 keV to 50 MeV and electron radiation from 4 MeV to 25 MeV, as well as in brachytherapy with photon-emitting radionuclides. These applications are complementary to the use of ionization chambers.