If you would like to learn more about the IAEA’s work, sign up for our weekly updates containing our most important news, multimedia and more.
Radiation Protection in New Radionuclide Therapy Procedures
Moderator: Vesna Gershan (IAEA)
Presenters: Søren Holm (Denmark), Soma Somanesan (Singapore) and Kuangyu Shi (Switzerland)
About the webinar
New radiopharmaceuticals for therapeutic purposes have been introduced around the world over the past decade. These include Y90 microspheres for liver malignancies, Lu177/Ac225 peptides for neuroendocrine tumours, and Lu177 PSMA and Ra223 for prostate cancer. Due to their clinically proven effectiveness, their use has increased in many countries.
These emerging radionuclide therapies require specific radiation protection precautions. However, most international and national requirements and guidelines do not yet include or do not adequately address them.
This webinar will provide an overview of the radiation protection issues in using these types of radionuclide therapies, and present some practical considerations and technological tools that may contribute to the enhancement of patient protection.
Learning objectives
1. To understand and widen awareness in radiation protection of patients in this new era of radionuclide therapy.
2. To learn and be aware of the practical radiation safety considerations for these new types of radionuclide therapies.
3. To understand and generate awareness on the potential contribution of modern technologies in radiation protection of patients during radionuclide therapy.
About the presenters
Søren Holm is Senior Medical Physicist at the Department of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Copenhagen University Hospital – Rigshospitalet, Denmark, where he is actively involved in therapies using, for example, Lu-177 and Ra-223. He holds a master’s in physics and a PhD in Medical Physics from Copenhagen University, and is recognized as a medical physics expert and radiation protection expert. He is the coauthor of more than 120 peer reviewed papers and 30 book chapters, proceedings and editorials, mainly about single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET), kinetics, dosimetry and radiation protection. He is currently a member of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Task Group 117 about radiation protection in PET and positron emission tomography–computed tomography (PET/CT). He has served as an IAEA expert in projects about quality control for non-imaging equipment, artefacts in PET/CT and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT/CT), and medical physicists staffing, in addition to several training missions.
Soma Somanesan has been working as Senior Principal Medical Physicist in the Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Singapore General Hospital for over three decades, where he is also the chief of the Radiation Response Team, Hospital Radiation Safety Officer and Operations and Quality Assurance Manager at the Cyclotron Facility. He chairs several committees in radiation safety and medical physics education in Singapore, regional countries and for the IAEA. He acts as lecturer and expert in nuclear medicine and radiation physics, and trains physicists, radiographers and nurses in Singapore in nuclear medicine and radiology. He is an active visiting lecturer and expert in nuclear medicine and radiation physics, and has collaborated with the IAEA during the past two decades on quality management in nuclear medicine and the production of PET radiopharmaceuticals.
Kuangyu Shi is the Associate Professor, Chief Medical Physicist and Head of the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Translational Theranostics at the Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland. Additionally, he is a senior lecturer at Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. He holds a PhD from the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany and conducted his postdoctoral research at the Department of Nuclear Medicine, TUM, where he worked as subgroup leader from 2012 to 2018. In May 2018 he completed habilitation at the Department of Informatics, TUM. His research focuses on developing computational methods to optimize the practice of nuclear medicine imaging and therapy.