The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) announced today that the Computed Tomography (CT) Nomenclature Working Group, led by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), has received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) Director’s Special Citation Award for developing CT imaging radiation safety instructional materials through a collaboration of end-users, CT manufacturers and the FDA. The award is MITA’s second recognition from the FDA.
Working with AAPM and other industry partners, MITA developed consensus protocols for frequently-performed CT examinations, summarizing the basic requirements of the exam and giving several model-specific examples of scan and reconstruction parameters. This cross-functional group is valued by the CDRH as the go-to resource for stakeholder validation.
A key component of the standardization of CT nomenclature and protocols is MITA’s CT Dose Check initiative, intended to serve as a safety feature on new equipment, for which dose check levels are adjustable by site and provide an alert to CT machine operators when recommended radiation dose levels as determined by hospitals and imaging centers will be exceeded. The alert is designed to provide a clear indication to health care providers as to when radiation dose adjustments would result in delivering a dose higher than the facility’s pre-determined dose threshold for routine use.
