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NIST and Your Health |
| NIST has established the primary X-ray standards by which mammographic equipment at the more than 10,000 mammography centers in the United States can be calibrated. | Mammography got even safer in
February 1996 when the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) established the primary X-ray standards for mammography. Now
operators and inspectors of more than 10,000 mammography centers in the United States will
be able to calibrate their X-ray equipment to the NIST standard and thereby helping to
assure that the exposure they prescribe for each patient is the exposure the patient
actually receives. NIST also helps in providing the standards and measurement protocols for the radiopharmaceutical agents that doctors use for such tests as brain imaging and heart stress tests. Since the amount of radioactivity in each batch of a radiopharmaceutical constantly decreases over time, it is imperative that the activity can be accurately measured as the drugs move from manufacturers to various clinical settings and finally in and through patients. NIST provides a key part of the infrastructure for monitoring the activity of the roughly 7 million radiopharmaceutically based procedures that are carried out each day. In a more conventional arena, the accuracy of the measurements required for making pills, solutions, suspensions and other drug preparations containing specific amounts of pharmaceutical agents ultimately depend in many cases on standards developed and maintained at NIST. For example, a series of Standard Reference Materials for measuring cholesterol has reduced uncertainties significantly thereby reducing the number of misdiagnosed patients--those incorrectly diagnosed as having dangerous cholesterol or those who actually do have risky cholesterol levels yet are not diagnosed as such--and contributing significantly to an estimated $100 million savings per year in physician and hospital health care costs. |
| Links: | Read a news release about the new
mammography standards. Mammography is just one of many ways NIST has its mark on medical and dental practice. Here are a few other examples that you can explore: |