AAPM President Testifies on NIST Physics Laboratory
At last month’s hearing by the House Subcommittee on Technology, Dr. Bhudatt Paliwal, President of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, described the importance of the NIST Physical Laboratory to accurate x-ray mammography (see FYI #76.) Portions of his written testimony follow.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, chaired by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) will mark-up its FY 1997 appropriations bill for NIST later this month (see FYI #32 for subcommittee roster and address.)
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”...as president of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the largest organization in the world of physicists who work in health care, I am delighted to testify today about the importance medical physics places on accurate national standards at the NIST. Diagnostic and therapeutic health care today rely in large measure on our members working with the Physics Laboratory at NIST through secondary laboratories called Accredited Dosimetry Calibration Laboratories (ADCL). . . . In this manner, uniformity, and concomitantly quality and safety, is ensured for over 300 million diagnostic radiological procedures...and for an estimated 600,000 cancer patients who receive therapeutic doses of radiation. . . . Our nation needs to maintain primary standards to keep radiation doses accurate and as low as reasonably possible as well as achieving good image quality.”
“A critical example of the needs for credibility of measurements are radiation standards for x-ray mammography. The White House, several government agencies, and the Congress have long recognized both the needs for more widespread use of mammography and for greater uniformity of services to those women obtaining mammograms. There is a clear linkage here, in that women are demanding certification of the mammography facilities, and standards for physical measurements (along with training for radiologic technicians) are key to establishing this credibility. This was recently recognized by Congress by the establishment of the Mammography Quality Standards Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-539).
“The NIST Physics Laboratory has recently set up a world-class calibration range for x-ray beam qualities that are needed to serve our calibration laboratories, manufacturers and clinics. The state-of-the-art system has molybdenum- and rhodium-anode x-ray tubes and filters to allow tests of mammography instruments from a range of US manufacturers. . . . The Diagnostic Committee of AAPM considers it essential that primary standards for radiation exposure be maintained at NIST. It would be unacceptable and cost ineffective to force US manufacturers and medical physicists to go to foreign standards laboratories for measurements as critical as radiation exposure. This procedure of using foreign laboratories also would compromise Mammography standards in the US since there would be no control over the standards.”
“With the increased interest and emphasis on x-ray mammography, we are experiencing more demands on our practicing medical physicists; more calibrations, on a wider range of instruments, and with more stringent accuracy requirements. NIST is working directly with AAPM task groups of the Diagnostic Committee, with other federal agencies and the states, as well as other voluntary standards groups (International Electrotechnical Commission) to ensure that national standards are available to meet these new challenges. By serving as a highly competent, unbiased third party, NIST has been able to consistently show leadership in developing new consensus standards. We cannot overestimate the value this critical contribution from NIST makes to the quality of US health care.”
