Radiation safety and quality of computed tomography imaging of children and young adults 

Expected Impact:

As an expected outcome of the activities and in line with the SAMIRA objective to ensure that applications of ionising radiation in Member States operate in line with high standards for quality and safety, medical staff should have improved tools to ensure justification and optimisation of medical procedures involving ionising radiation in children and young adults.

This should take various forms of technical/practical tools, like improved imaging referral and clinical guidelines, guidance, protocols and tools for specific exams and equipment, education and training curricula and material. Trainings for the hospital staff and information campaigns should also be organised.

This will benefit paediatric, adolescents, and young adult patients, and parents and young adults accessing imaging services in Member States. The actions are expected to bring short-term improvements in radiation safety and quality of CT and other radiological imaging in children and young patients and reduction of avoidable exposure to ionising radiation. In the mid- to long- term, this is expected to translate into reduced avoidable secondary effects, such as brain cancer linked to head CT exams.

The outcomes of these activities should also reduce discrepancies in Europe to current radiation technology in medical applications through a coordinated approach.

Objective:

The aim of the action is to enhance the quality and radiation safety of medical applications of ionising radiation in children, adolescents and young adults. Actions taken should in particular focus on computed tomography procedures in children and young adults and aim to reduce the associated risk of adverse secondary effects, such as brain and other types of cancer.

This action should cover in priority head CT exams in children, adolescents and young adults. It can be extended to other body regions, as well as other imaging modalities involving ionising radiation, if there is a frequent clinical indication for paediatric imaging and improved justification and optimisation is considered achievable. This action could include conventional and interventional radiology, CT and nuclear medicine and could also include imaging procedures performed as part of radiotherapy treatments.

Scope:

The activities carried out in this action should include the following:

a) review of referral guidelines for imaging, clinical guidelines, and clinical decision support systems in use in Member States for justification of radiological imaging in children, adolescents and young adults and recommendations for improvement of these guidelines to the relevant actors;

b) review of the equipment base and the access to dedicated paediatric imaging in Member States and recommendations for improvement of the equipment base to the relevant actors;

c) development of guidance, protocols and tools for optimisation of paediatric CT exams, for the CT devices and the clinical indications that are the most used in Europe;

d) the organisation of information and dissemination campaigns concerning recommendations, guidance, protocols and tools for justification and optimisation of paediatric imaging among the concerned hospitals and medical centres in all Member States;

e) development of education and training curricula, material, and tools on radiation protection of paediatric patients, for the applicable professional groups;

f) the organisation of a training of radiologists, radiographers, medical physicists, and radiology nurses in practical approaches to radiation protection of paediatric patients;

g) the organisation of information campaigns about the benefits, risks and radiation safety of imaging in paediatric, adolescent and young adult patients, targeted at parents and young adults.

Applicants must be legally established organisations, public authorities or public sector bodies (in particular, research and health institutions, universities and higher education establishments) in EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories linked to it (OCTs).

Applications will also be accepted from EEA countries and countries associated to the EU4Health Programme (third countries, candidate countries and potential candidate countries, neighbourhood countries) or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature.

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