Assessment of Secondary Shielding of the Mammography Room of Al-Hussaini Hospital in Karbala City, Iraq

S. Jaafer, Header; A. Rasheed, Abdullah

	Assessment of Secondary Shielding of the Mammography Room of Al-Hussaini Hospital in Karbala City, Iraq
Kerbala Journal of Medicine
Article 1, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 1648-1654 PDF (0 K)
Authors
Header S. Jaafer; Abdullah A. Rasheed
Abstract
X-ray equipment must be installed in adequately shielded rooms to ensure that public in the vicinity of the x-ray installations are not unduly exposed to x-ray radiation. The adequacy of shielding depends on the material and thickness used for this purpose. This work therefore studies the secondary shielding of the mammography room. By considering the mammography room design and the radiographic devices profiles used , the clinical total workload per week and total workload per patient have been computed and its distribution according to the most widely used voltages has been determined by recording the actual clinical technical values of maximum ,average and minimum mAs and the corresponding values of kilovolt peak for 2119 women over six months. As a diagnostic xray radiation shielding reference, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements report No.147 (NCRP report No.147) and XRAYBARR computer program have been used to compute the secondary barrier thicknesses of Gypsum and Wood of the mammography room.. It is found that the total workload per week and the total workload per patient of the room were about three times that of stated by the NCRP report No.147 for a half value of the patients.The required thicknesses of Gypsum and Wood were about 4 mm and 20 mm respectively, whereas the actual thicknesses are higher than these values ,furthermore ,another conventional materials were used as secondary barriers ,such as bricks and concrete, hence the secondary barriers thicknesses exist in the room are more than adequate.

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