GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

This action should cover in priority head CT exams in children, adolescents and young adults. It can be extended to other body regions, as well as other imaging modalities involving ionising radiation, if there is a frequent clinical indication for paediatric imaging and improved justification and optimisation is considered achievable. This action could include conventional and interventional radiology, CT and nuclear medicine and could also include imaging procedures performed as part of radiotherapy treatments.

The activities carried out in this action should include the following:

• review of referral guidelines for imaging, clinical guidelines, and clinical decision support systems in use in Member States for justification of radiological imaging in children, adolescents and young adults and recommendations for improvement of these guidelines to the relevant actors;
• review of the equipment base and the access to dedicated paediatric imaging in Member States and recommendations for improvement of the equipment base to the relevant actors;
• development of guidance, protocols and tools for optimisation of paediatric CT exams, for the CT devices and the clinical indications that are the most used in Europe;
• the organisation of information and dissemination campaigns concerning recommendations, guidance, protocols and tools for justification and optimisation of paediatric imaging among the concerned hospitals and medical centres in all Member States;
• development of education and training curricula, material, and tools on radiation protection of paediatric patients, for the applicable professional groups;
• the organisation of a training of radiologists, radiographers, medical physicists, and radiology nurses in practical approaches to radiation protection of paediatric patients;
• the organisation of information campaigns about the benefits, risks and radiation safety of imaging in paediatric, adolescent and young adult patients, targeted at parents and young adults.