The utility of Automatic Dispenser in Nuclear Medicine

Objectives Radionuclide has been widely applied in nuclear meidicine. Previously, Staff in nuclear medicine department diapensed and diluted the radiopharmaceutical manually, leading to a low dispensing accuracy and a worse radiation protection. The aim of this study is to find a solution to improve the dispensing accuracy and lower the radiation exposure .

Methods 4 staff were involved in this study using the same radiopharmaceutical (18F-FDG)，and they injected the same number of patients(80 every month)with the same inject dose (10mCi). 8 months (from 2013.June to 2014.January)data before using automatic dispenser were placed in Group 1 and 8 months (from 2014.Febuary to 2014.September)data after using automatic dispenser were placed in Group 2. Individual exposure dose were recorded every 2 months. The actual injected radioisotope dose of each patient were measured and the dispensing deviation were calculated.

Results The individual radiation dose of Group 1 was 353.55μSv，365.9μSv ，348.58μSv and 384.93μSv ，respectively，while，the dose of Group 2 is 71.78μSv ，83.68μSv ，79.35μSv and 72.7μSv ，respectively，Statistics showed there was significant difference between two Groups，Group 2 was much lower than Group 1. The mean dispensing deviation of Group 1 is 3.986% and Group 2 is 1.211% , which has significant difference.

Conclusions Automatic Dispenser can be a good solution to lower the radiation exposure ，which is easy to operate and has high dispensing speed , The automatic dispenser should be promoted to more nuclear medicine department.