History

In 1997, a collaboration between British Nuclear Fuels plc, Westlakes Research Institute and the UK National Radiological Protection Board, (now part of the Health Protection Agency) started, with the aim of producing IMBA (Integrated Modules for Bioassay Analysis), a suite of software modules that implement the new ICRP models for estimation of intakes and doses. This was partly in response to new UK regulations, and partly due to the requirement for a unified approach in estimating intakes and doses from bioassay measurements within the UK. SInce then, the IMBA modules have been developed further, have gone through extensive quality assurance, and are now used for routine dose assessment by approved dosimetry services throughout the UK. Interest in the IMBA methodology was been shown by the United States Department of Energy (USDOE), and in 2001 an ambitious project to develop a software package which would meet the requirements of all of the major USDOE sites began. This was completed in 200? (IMBA Expert™ USDOE Edition).

Origins of IMBA Professional Plus
IMBA Professional Plus was developed by the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) in association with ACJ & Associates, Inc., USA. This software is based on the IMBA Expert™ series of customized Windows® bioassay and internal dosimetry software applications, which provide user-friendly interfaces with the HPA's IMBA suite. They automatically apply the extensively quality-assured IMBA code modules to estimate single or multiple intakes of various radionuclides, and to calculate the resulting doses from measurements of activity in the body and/or excreta. The IMBA code modules implement all of the International Commission on Radiological Protection's currently recommended respiratory tract, GI-tract, tissue dosimetry, biokinetic and bioassay models for the selected radionuclides and the ICRP68 Reference Worker.