Information Regarding the Field of Dental Radiology

The commissioning and use of X-ray equipment for medical purposes is subject to three conditions:

  1. The X-ray equipment must be authorised in advance (Section 44 of the Radiation Protection Act)
  2. The independent expert has inspected and approved the duly authorised X-ray equipment (Sections 53 and 102 of the Radiation Protection Act)
  3. Only a dentist who has ministerial authorisation to perform dental radiodiagnostics is authorised to use the X-ray equipment. They may not delegate the exposure of patients to dental assistants (Art. 23 and 26 of the Radiation Protection Act).

Below are all the essential links. The guide (Pdf, 479 Kb) contains further explanations and details.

Authorisations

  • Authorisation application forms
  • You can contact the Radiation Protection Division for specific questions regarding the authorisation process and to obtain details of its requirements in terms of the documents to be provided, but it cannot give detailed advice on your specific situation.
  • In the context of authorisation applications for a CBCT, the provision of a radiation protection calculation (Pdf) and mandatory advice from an expert are automatically required.
  • Medical physics experts (Pdf) can offer assistance with administrative procedures, radiation protection calculations, installation acceptance and CBCT acceptance testing.
  • Radiation protection experts (Pdf) can offer assistance with administrative procedures, radiation protection calculations and installation acceptance from a radiation protection perspective.

        However, radiation protection experts cannot perform CBCT acceptance testing.

Inspection of radiological equipment by an independent expert: Acceptance testing and periodic verification

Before the first exposure of a patient, an acceptance test of the radiological equipment must be carried out, including aspects of radiation protection not related to the patient (Sections 102.1 and 53 of the Act).

Quality Assurance Programme

After inspection by the independent expert, the consistency of the medical imaging chain must be ensured. To this end, monthly checks using a dedicated phantom and documentation of the results obtained are necessary.

Dosimetric study

In accordance with legislation, and in particular Article 97 (Dose assessment) of the Law of 28 May 2019 on radiation protection, each radiological facility is required to assess the average dose administered to patients.

To this end, the Radiation Protection Division offers establishments (operating panoramic or three-dimensional dental X-ray equipment) an assessment of the doses delivered to patients:

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