Finger doses received during 18FDG injections calculated with Monte Carlo Simulations

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the absorbed doses, derived from the administration of ¹⁸FDG, in the fingers of PET physicians using the GEANT3 Monte Carlo code. A comparison is made with data obtained with thermoluminescent dosimeters. Considering a workload of 10 patients per week and per medical doctor, each physician receives doses five times lower than the weekly skin dose limit when the fingers are around the active volume and 20 times lower if they are at the rear end of the syringe. In the calculations, a typical administered activity of 0.370 GBq was assumed with a finger-syringe contact time of 5 s. Monte Carlo calculations were performed for different kinds of syringes and different injected volumes. Finger doses as a function of the syringe wall thickness for three kinds of wall materials are also calculated. Results show a slight dose reduction when the polypropylene syringe is replaced with a Pyrex one. They also allow deriving guidelines for the handling of syringes containing the most used PET radiopharmaceuticals.