After comparing the radiation dose recieved for Intra-arterial (IA) Chemotherapy performed in Interventional radiology with other paediatric centres, We wondered if we could lower our radiation dose to the patient without effecting images quality?

IA chemotherapy is a procedure performed by neuro radiologists where a catheter is guided intravascularly using xray guidance to the ophthalmic artery where an oncologist can then directly inject chemotherapy. This is a treatment for children with retinoblastoma.

By looking into our techniques we discovered that most of our dose came from Digital subtraction angiography (DSA) which we perform during the procedure. The DSA acquisitions are used to guide the neuro radiologists to the correct vessel, by highlighting the anatomy using contrast. We decided to try to reduce our radiation dose per frame in a DSA acquisitions from 3000μSv to 1800μSv.

After this change was made the performing Neuro radiologists were asked to ensure they were happy with the changes to the DSA images with a result of reducing the radiation dose to the patient.