ICRP perspective on criteria of acceptability for medical radiological equipment.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) does not have a specific publication or recent detailed advice on acceptability criteria and suspension levels for medical radiological equipment. However, a number of the Commission's publications clearly stress the need to carry out acceptance testing of radiological equipment. Such general recommendations are frequent in earlier and recent reports related to external radiation therapy. Over 30 y ago, the ICRP even included some examples of parameter accuracies concerning acceptance levels in connection with radiotherapy units. Later more general advices related to acceptability tests as important parts of various quality assurance programs were formulated for radiation therapy as well as for radiodiagnostics without going into details to give values for specific parameters. In the radiodiagnostic field, there are such general recommendations in reports related to equipment for X-ray interventional procedures, digital radiology and computed tomography. The ICRP highly supports the elaboration of detailed and clear acceptability and suspension criteria for equipment used in medical radiology carried out by organisations like International Atomic Energy Agency, International Electrotechnical Commission, European Commission, National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA, USA) and others and consider such criteria as important parts of the quality programmes to guarantee good radiation safety conditions for patients in radiation therapy as well as in radiodiagnostics.