X-rays in living-room-like medical practices and the eagerness to experiment among the users of the newly discovered radiation technology used to be a commonplace. Today, we are aware of the downside of this technology and have set ourselves the goal of reducing the radiation dose.

Image quality and dose are usually viewed as two sides of the same coin: the higher the dose, the better the quality of the image. But while diagnostic confidence isn’t negotiable, X-rays also entail the risk of damaging the genetic material or causing burns. Today it is possible to produce good images with low dose.

Professor Götz Richter, MD, Medical Director of the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart, Germany, shares practical pointers on reducing the radiation dose when performing uterine fibroid embolization (UFE) and prostatic artery embolization (PAE) for both patients and staff.

Röntgen’s discovery was followed by a huge wave of euphoria. But the examinations in that era only distantly resembled the ones we’re familiar with today: during the examination, physician and patient were completely unprotected from the rays. This brought the lives of many pioneers in radiology to a premature end.