Image Gently: A campaign to promote radiation protection for children worldwide

Abstract

With the goal of raising awareness and developing stakeholder educational tools for the appropriate imaging of children, the Image Gently campaign was launched in 2007. This campaign is a product of a multidisciplinary alliance with international representation which now numbers nearly 100 medical and dental professional societies and organisations, and includes regulatory organisations. The alliance focuses on increasing awareness and developing education materials that support the protection of children worldwide from unnecessary radiation in medicine. The alliance members work with agencies and regulatory bodies to improve standards and measures that are specific to children. The campaign has produced open source modules for all stakeholders regarding CT, fluoroscopy, nuclear medicine, interventional radiology, digital radiography and dental imaging. The philosophy of the Image Gently steering committee is to collaborate, to share information freely, to keep messaging simple and to commit to lifelong learning. Many healthcare practitioners may not understand how to decrease children's radiation exposure; the goal of Image Gently is to increase all stakeholders' understanding of both the benefits and the risks and to encourage radiation reduction strategies. This article summarises the rationale and goals of the global campaign to date.