3C03-AAPM Laboratory Accreditation Program in an International Community

Thomas Slowey

President, K & S Associates

Nashville, TN 37210-3718

In 1971 the AAPM established a system of Regional Calibration Laboratories (RCL) to satisfy the need in the medical community for dosimetry calibrations with reasonable turn-around times at reasonable cost through a close collaboration between the AAPM and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS).  At that time NBS was unable to handle the demand for dosimetry calibrations from the medical physics community.  Over the past 33 years the AAPM accreditation program has grown in the number of labs accredited and in the complexity of the services offered.  In recent years the accreditation program has been modernized to satisfy international standards for the competence of calibration labs (ISO 17025) and standards relating to the operation of a competent accreditation system (ISO Guide 58) in preparation for recognition by the National Cooperation for Laboratory Accreditation (NACLA) and other international laboratory accreditation cooperations (ILAC, APLAC).  This presentation describes the history, the unique fundamental concepts of redundancy in measurements and standards and shows examples of the precision measurement methods that are the basis of this programs long term success.