Current trends in estimating risk of cancer from exposure to low doses of ionising radiation.

Although ionising radiation has proven beneficial in the diagnosis and therapy of a number of diseases, one should keep in mind that irradiating healthy tissue may increase the risk of cancer. In order to justify an exposure to radiation, both the benefits and the risks must be evaluated and compared. The deleterious effects of medium and high doses are well known, but it is much less clear what effects arise from low doses (below 0.1 Gy), which is why such risk estimates are extremely important. This review presents the current state, important assumptions and steps being made in deriving cancer risk estimates for low dose exposures.