Kick off of MEDIRAD, a European project that aims to improve radiation protection in the medical field

The European Comission-funded €10M MEDIRAD project kicked off on June 27, with Elisabeth Cardis, head of the Radiation Programme at ISGlobal, as scientific coordinator. The project also has a clinical coordinator (Guy Frija, Chair of Eurosafe Imaging) and a management coordinator (the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research or EIBIR). During two days, more than 70 experts from 33 partner institutions and 14 European countries came together at the Palau Macaya in Barcelona to plan and approve the timeline of activities to be developed by the six work packages of the project.

MEDIRAD’s main goal is to better understand the implications of medical low dose radiation exposure in order to provide the scientific bases to improve the practice of radiation protection in the medical field. The three main activities of the project will be i) improve organ dose estimation, ii) evaluate the effects of low to moderate doses of radiation, with a focus on cardiovascular disease as a result of radiotherapy and cancer risk as a result of CT scans, and iii) formulate a series of evidence-based recommendations to improve radiation protection of patients, medical workers and general public. The project will also produce recommendations that are expected to influence the agenda on future Radiation Protection research in Europe.

The project will last four years, and is supported by the five European medical associations (EANM, EFOMP, EFRS, ESR y ESTRO) and EURAMED, as well as the main European platforms of radiation research (MELODI and EURADOS).