Demographics of the members of the special interest group for early career medical physicists: A statistical analysis of survey results.

INTRODUCTION: The Early Career Medical Physicists Special Interest Group (SIG_FREC) that operates within EFOMP aims to represent individuals with less than 10 years of experience working as medical physics professionals. The purpose of this survey was to better understand the specific needs and expectations of early-career medical physicists across Europe. The aim of this study was to allow these early-career professionals to voice their ideas within EFOMP and provide insights into their challenges and opportunities while also providing them with the possibility of making suggestions for the growth of the SIG. Doing this, the members can be better equipped to be future leaders of the Medical Physics profession in their own country and in Europe. METHODS: The Steering Committee of SIG_FREC developed a questionnaire and distributed it to its members. RESULTS: Out of the total number of members of the SIG_FREC at the time of the questionnaire (97 members), 42 of them responded to the survey yielding a response rate of 43%. These provided valuable insights based on their experiences about medical physics in their country. CONCLUSION: The responses to the questionnaire provided a snapshot of the opinion of early-career medical physicists, representing a wide geographical distribution across Europe. The feedback from SIG_FREC members highlighted potential future operations within EFOMP.

Radiation exposure to fetus from extremity CBCT examinations.

PURPOSE: To evaluate fetal doses from extremity CBCT examinations at different stages of pregnancy and to investigate different methods of fetal dose optimization. METHOD: Fetal doses were measured in an anthropomorphic phantom for two CBCT examination protocols - knee and elbow. The measurements were made at three different heights representing the three trimesters during pregnancy and three different depths in the phantom. The effect of soft tissue layer, tube voltage, add-on device shield and body angulation on fetal dose were investigated. RESULTS: The fetal doses in clinical examination protocols were in the range of 3.4 to 6.0 µGy during knee examinations and 2.9 to 7.7 µGy during elbow examinations depending on the depth of the fetus and the stage of pregnancy. A soft tissue layer representing variative body composition above abdomen region decreased the fetal dose up to 19 % in knee and up to 21 % in elbow examinations. Using lower tube voltage decreased the fetal doses up to 45 % (knee) and 51 % (elbow). An add-on device shield decreased the fetal doses up to 91 % (knee) and up to 75 % (elbow). Turning the body away from the device bore reduced the fetal doses up to 62 %. The conversion factor to convert an entrance surface dose to the fetal dose ranged from 0.4 to 0.6. CONCLUSIONS: The fetal doses from CBCT examinations of extremities are low and do not produce a concern about radiation detriment to the fetus. The most efficient way found to reduce the fetal dose was to use the add-on device shielding.