IAEA/RCA Regional Training Course on Quality Assurance in Nuclear Medicine for Medical Physicists will be held on 18-22 February 2009 in Dhaka, Bangladesh in cooperation with the Government of Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) with a view to raising the level of knowledge and competence of medical physicists specializing in nuclear medicine, with special emphasis on quality assurance programmes.

Ensuring good clinical practice involves teamwork between different professional (i.e., physicians, medical physicists, technologists, etc.) who contribute towards this goal through their different expertise. Furthermore, quality control on nuclear medicine equipment plays an integral role in optimizing clinical care. QC is cost effective since it both contributes towards obtaining reliable clinical results, and also ensures that preventive action can be taken before serious problems develop. Given that all nuclear medicine centers should strive for providing optimal standards, it is particularly important for the anticipated expansion of nuclear medicine practices in the RCA Member States that such an expansion is coupled with quality assurance programmes that provide optimal standards.

This course is primarily meant to provide guidance to the medical physicist on-site, or associated with, a nuclear medicine center since the medical physicist has the main responsibility for ensuring optimal quality control of equipment. The topics to be covered include: 1) physics for nuclear medicine, 2) identification of appropriate measures to monitor the quality of equipment performance, 3) requirements for quality assurance and quality control, 4) quality assurance checks on a scintillation camera according to internationally recognized protocols, 5) quality assurance checks on a radionuclide calibrator, and 6) role and responsibility of the medical physicist in nuclear medicine.

For more information please contact Dr. Kamila Afroj Quadir, Principal Scientific Officer, Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound, BAEC, at q.kamila@gmail.com.