The use of ionising radiation (IR) with advanced technology in medicine represents a tremendous benefit for the diagnosis and treatment of pathologies in paediatric populations. While benefits to the patient largely outweigh the risk, the late effects of exposure to IR are particularly important to understand in populations of young patients who nowadays survive the disease for decades; the evidence to-date suggesting that children are more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation than adults. 
HARMONIC aims at complementing recent studies on paediatric CT examinations, to improve understanding of the health effects of exposure to medical IR in children, specifically cancer patients treated with modern radiotherapy techniques, and cardiac patients treated with X-ray guided imaging procedures.
The project builds on a multi-disciplinary collaboration to provide the medical and scientific communities with instruments to investigate cancer and non-cancer outcomes (neuro & cardiovascular and endocrine system effects) in these two European paediatric cohorts and evaluate Quality of Life (QoL) and social impacts, with potential for advanced patient-specific dose reconstruction and mechanistic investigations.

The HARMONIC project (Health effects of cArdiac fluoRoscopy and MOderN radIotherapy in paediatriCs) has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 under grant agreement No 847707