Managing risk from X-ray Emitting Devices in Canada: The symbiotic relationship between research and policy development
Health Canada administers the Radiation Emitting Devices (RED) Act and its Regulations to protect Canadians from risk associated with X-ray exposure. When developing, maintaining, and enforcing these policies and other safety documentation, physicists at Health Canada consult the scientific literature and international standards. Newer technologies such as hand-held X-ray devices or cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) systems are not sufficiently addressed by current policies thus leaving gaps in knowledge for their safe use and evaluation. Targeted research is used address these gaps and inform policy development. This presentation will focus on current research evaluating different methods for comparing the radiation output from different CBCT systems and protocols as well as tools that have been developed in collaboration with Carleton University to assist with this research. It will touch on potential avenues for future research and demonstrate how these relate to Health Canada’s mandate to protect the health and safety of Canadians.
Bio
Dr. Sarah Cuddy-Walsh is a medical physicist and X-ray specialist with Health Canada in the Ionizing and Acoustic Radiation Physical Sciences Division of the Consumer and Clinical Radiation Protection Bureau. She received her Ph.D. in Medical Physics from Carleton University in 2019 with a focus on the noise characteristics of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images. Dr. Cuddy-Walsh began her current position in 2020, after a year of post-doctoral research at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. She is locally a member of the Ottawa Medical Physics Institute (OMPI), nationally a member of the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP) Imaging Committee, and internationally a member of the IEC 62B/WG54 committee for radiographic and radioscopic X-ray equipment for diagnostic or interventional procedures. Her current responsibilities include policy development and research to inform this. Currently this research is focused on evaluating different metrics for comparing the radiation output from different cone-beam CT protocols and systems. She is also developing tools to improve the efficiency of dosimetric testing for research and regulatory compliance.