 Why do pregnant women require special care in medical imaging? Around 10 million patients benefit every day from X-ray or nuclear medicine procedures used to diagnose diseases and guide treatment. One million of them are women and childbearing age. Some of them may be pregnant. In medical imaging, there is a group that requires special attention and that is female patients who may be pregnant. It is very important to know whether a woman is pregnant or not because the fetus has a high sensitivity to radiation, especially in the first three months of pregnancy. Health professionals need to identify a potential pregnancy before the exam. They ask the patient and display advisory notices in imaging departments. What if a patient is pregnant but needs an exam? Doctors advise whether a radiological procedure may be replaced with an alternative test or delayed until after pregnancy. When such procedures are unavoidable, all appropriate measures are taken to protect the unborn child. The radiation physicist, the technician and the radiologist can decide which options are available to reduce the dose. Through its safety standards and guidelines, the IAEA helps health professionals to use radiation in medicine safely and effectively.