Radiologist creates app that simplifies how we talk about radiation exposure

As concerns about radiation exposure continue to grow, both patients and physicians are looking for ways to quantitatively understand the dangers and consequences of getting too much.

To help educate them, Kevin Seals, MD, a resident physician specializing in radiology at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), developed a smartphone app to do just that.

His app, RADiDOC, shows the radiation doses associated with different medical imaging studies and image-guided procedures in simple, everyday terms, like the amount of radiation exposure one might get from the sun or during a flight.

Patients can also log their radiation exposure in time variables on the app, which was released in May in Apple’s App Store. Though Seals, 30, was the app’s main creator, he worked with several people at UCLA to develop it, including radiologists Justin McWilliams, MD, Edward Lee, MD, PhD, Kambiz Motamedi, MD, Paul Iskander, MD, Joe Tesoriero, MD, Ramsey Al-Hakim, MD, and radiology professor Christopher Cagnon, PhD.

But RADiDOC is not the only concept of its kind out there. Other websites and apps have used similar technologies to provide patients and radiologists with quantitative data about radiation exposure, like XrayRisk.com and Radiation Calculator, a website and smartphone app.

But even with the competition, Seals says his app’s simplistic nature and comprehensive data capabilities could set it apart and help support better outcomes in radiology.

He spoke with Radiology Business about RADiDOC, how it helps patients make decisions about their medical care, and how it could make radiologists better at their jobs.

Radiology Business: Why did you see the need to simplify the way radiologists and patients discuss radiation exposure?

Kevin Seals: If you have a chest x-ray, you can tell someone that is associated with some quantitative number of millisieverts and that doesn’t really mean much. But if you tell them that is equivalent to a certain number of flights, it kind of makes more sense and people will get it. The app is finding intuitive, simple ways to express radiation levels so that anyone can understand it quickly.

How could the app help patients make decisions about their medical care?

Say your physician tells you you’re getting an abdomen CT scan, you can look that up specifically and use the app to evaluate if you want the imaging study or not—kind of weighing the medical need for it relative to the risks in a discussion with your physician.

Who is your app more helpful to? Patients or radiologists?

Seals: There’s equal utility for both. Both would have significant interest in it, and that’s because it’s simple enough that any patient can immediately understand it without any medical training. But at the same time, your general physician doesn’t have much background with regards to radiation risk and radiation dose. They may have a very rough understanding of some very basic fundamental concepts, but in terms of risk levels of an x-ray versus a CT scan, they don’t really have specific training in that. So when you have a patient who asks about the risks associated with a study, general physicians are almost certainly not going to know in any quantitative way, so this app could allow them to have a very intelligent discussion with their patients about these issues.

Why is it important for patients and physicians to keep track of radiation exposure?

It’s important because particularly patients who are getting a fair amount of medical imaging, like cancer patients, are getting almost serial PET/CT examinations. That patient group tends to be particularly interested in the level of radiation exposure they’re getting. A fundamental principal of medicine is informed consent. Anything we do in medicine, it’s very important that our patients understand the benefits, but also the risks. My app allows for a better informed consent process where we can intelligently explain to the patient what the risk is for the imaging studies and get a really robust informed consent. That’s important for both physicians that are responsible for obtaining the informed consent and for patients who need to understand the risks associated with their medical treatment.

What is one patient group that could especially benefit from your app?

Seals: These issues are particularly important with parents of children. Parents commonly ask questions such as, “Does my kid really need this study?” and “What are the risks of this study?” And it’s really important because kids are at higher risk of developing cancer as the result of an imaging study and they have more years of life in which to actually develop a malignancy. So it’s important parents understand those risks and consent to their children getting procedures.

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