Regulation and compliance

AERB licence for a CT scanner: e-LORA registration, RSO and what a remote reporting partner needs from you

Every institute operating an X-ray or CT unit in India needs a Licence for Operation from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, obtained through the e-LORA portal under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules 2004. CT additionally requires an AERB-approved Radiation Safety Officer. A remote reporting partner has no AERB obligation of its own, but will ask for the licence number and validity of every scanner it reads from.

By Raman Sandhu, Co-founder, RaydiacPublished 11 September 20268 min read

The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) is the national regulator for radiation safety. Under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules 2004, any institute that operates a radiation-generating unit for medical diagnosis, which includes every CT scanner and every X-ray unit, must hold a Licence for Operation before the unit is used on a patient. The licence is applied for, issued, renewed and eventually closed through AERB's online portal, e-LORA.¹ CT carries an additional requirement: the institute must have a Radiation Safety Officer approved by AERB.¹ MRI and ultrasound do not use ionising radiation and are outside AERB's scope.

This guide is written for the hospital or diagnostic centre that owns the scanner. If you are reading it because a teleradiology partner asked for your AERB licence number, the section on what a remote reporting partner needs explains why.

What AERB regulates and what e-LORA is

AERB regulates the equipment, the room it sits in and the people who work near it. In diagnostic radiology that means three things: the unit itself must be of an approved type; the installation must meet AERB's layout and shielding requirements so that dose outside the room stays within limits; and the people who operate the unit must be declared as radiation workers, monitored for dose and supervised by a Radiation Safety Officer.¹

e-LORA (electronic Licensing of Radiation Applications) is the portal through which all of this is administered. An institute creates an account, declares its premises, adds each unit, nominates its RSO and radiation workers, applies for the licence and files every later change. AERB's own guidelines for the diagnostic radiology module describe the sequence of forms and approvals.¹ There is no paper route; if it is not on e-LORA, it is not on record.

The steps from purchase to licence

The order below follows the AERB guidelines and the Pioma explainer.¹² The exact forms, fees and processing times are published on e-LORA and change from time to time; check the portal for current fees rather than relying on any third-party figure.

Register the institute on e-LORA. The hospital or centre creates its institutional account, names the employer or licensee (the person legally responsible) and records the premises. Everything else hangs off this account.
Buy type-approved equipment. AERB maintains a list of equipment models with type approval or a no-objection certificate. Only such units can be licensed. Procurement of a CT unit is itself declared on e-LORA; do not sign a purchase order for a model that is not on the approved list, whether new or refurbished.
Get the layout and shielding right. The room plan, including wall shielding, door, control console position and viewing window, must meet AERB requirements for the unit's workload. For CT the layout is submitted for approval before installation. Build the room to the approved drawing; a change after approval is a fresh submission.
Quality assurance of the installed unit. After installation the unit undergoes QA testing and the results are uploaded. Periodic QA continues for the life of the unit and its records form part of the licence conditions.
Nominate a Radiation Safety Officer and obtain approval (CT). The RSO for a CT installation must hold the qualification and training AERB specifies and be approved by AERB on e-LORA, not merely appointed by the hospital.¹ A radiographer or radiologist at the site is commonly nominated, but the approval is personal to the nominee.
Declare radiation workers and issue TLD badges. Every person who operates the unit or works in the controlled area is declared on e-LORA and wears a thermoluminescent dosimeter badge that is exchanged and read on a fixed cycle, so that cumulative dose is monitored.¹
Apply for the Licence for Operation. With the unit, layout, QA, RSO and workers on record, the institute applies for the licence. Once issued, it should be displayed at the installation and its number recorded wherever the unit is referred to, including with any outsourced reporting partner.
Renew before expiry. The licence carries a validity period stated on the licence itself; renewal is filed on e-LORA before that date, with updated QA and worker records.²
Decommission properly. When a unit is sold, scrapped or relocated, the institute files a decommissioning or relocation notice on e-LORA. A unit that has left the premises but is still on the licence is a compliance problem for both the old and new owner.

Who is responsible for what

Role	Responsibility
Licensee / employer	The institute's legal owner or the person named on the licence. Holds the licence, ensures the conditions are met, funds monitoring and QA, and answers to AERB for the installation as a whole.
Radiation Safety Officer	Named and, for CT, AERB-approved. Runs the radiation protection programme: worker monitoring, safe operating procedures, QA records, incident reporting and correspondence with AERB. Must be replaced and re-approved if the person leaves.
Radiation workers	Radiographers, technologists and anyone else who operates the unit or works in the controlled area. Declared on e-LORA, badged with a TLD, trained in the procedures, and subject to dose limits.
Service engineers	Vendor engineers who install, service or repair the unit. Work under the vendor's own AERB obligations, but the institute should keep the service records because QA after service is part of the licence conditions.
Reporting radiologist (on-site)	Reads the images. If the radiologist also works in the controlled area, for example screening or intervention, they are a radiation worker and must be declared and badged.
Reporting radiologist (remote)	No AERB obligation. Never enters the radiation area and does not operate the unit. See the next section.

Common failures

AERB compliance problems in diagnostic centres are rarely dramatic. They are administrative, and they accumulate. The patterns below come up repeatedly.²

Expired licence. The unit keeps running because nobody owns the renewal date. The fix is a named person and a calendar entry well ahead of expiry.
Unapproved RSO. The original RSO left, a replacement was appointed internally, and nobody filed the change on e-LORA. Until AERB approves the new nominee, the CT installation is operating without an approved RSO.
Undeclared workers. A new radiographer starts, is handed a spare badge or none at all, and is never added on e-LORA. Dose monitoring for that person does not exist, and the institute's worker register is wrong.
Moving a unit. A CT is shifted to a new room or a second branch on the strength of the original licence. The licence is tied to the approved layout at a location; the new room needs its own approval before use.
Buying a unit without checking approval. A refurbished scanner arrives at a good price and cannot be licensed because the model has no type approval. The purchase is sunk cost.
Lapsed QA. Periodic quality assurance tests are missed or not uploaded. The licence conditions require the records, and a renewal without them stalls.

What a remote reporting partner needs from you

A teleradiology platform and the radiologists who read through it have no AERB obligation of their own. AERB regulates the operation of radiation-emitting equipment and the safety of the people around it; a radiologist interpreting a CT from another city never enters the radiation area, operates nothing and receives no dose.¹ The platform is not a licensee, not an RSO and not a radiation worker.

What a responsible partner does is check that the scanner it receives images from is licensed. Raydiac captures, for every CT unit at a site, the AERB Licence for Operation number, its validity date and the approved RSO's name at onboarding, and asks for the renewed licence when the validity date approaches. This is a legitimacy check, the same way a bank asks for a registration certificate: a centre that cannot produce a current licence for its CT is not a centre a reporting network should be signing reports for. The onboarding steps are described on the for hospitals page, and the security page describes what else is recorded about each site.

The same logic applies to the other registrations a centre holds. If the centre has an ultrasound machine, the PC-PNDT registration is a separate obligation with its own certificate, and the wider set of rules that govern remote reporting is summarised in our guide to teleradiology regulations in India. A centre being set up from scratch will find the whole sequence in how to start a diagnostic centre in India.

The licence is the hospital's. The check is the partner's. Neither replaces the other, and a partner that never asks for the licence number is telling you something about the rest of its onboarding.

Checklist

Item	Where it lives	Who owns it
Institute registered on e-LORA	e-LORA institutional account	Licensee
Each CT and X-ray unit is a type-approved model	AERB approved equipment list; e-LORA equipment record	Licensee, before purchase
Layout and shielding approved for each room	e-LORA layout submission and approval	Licensee with vendor
Installation QA and periodic QA on record	e-LORA uploads and site QA file	RSO
RSO nominated and AERB-approved (CT)	e-LORA RSO approval	Licensee
All radiation workers declared and badged	e-LORA worker register; TLD service records	RSO
Licence for Operation issued and displayed	e-LORA; framed copy at the installation	Licensee
Renewal date owned by a named person	Compliance calendar	Licensee
Staff changes filed on e-LORA	e-LORA worker and RSO records	RSO
Relocation or decommissioning filed before the unit moves	e-LORA	Licensee
Licence number, validity and RSO name shared with the reporting partner	Partner onboarding record	Site administrator

Fees, processing times and form names for each e-LORA step are published on the portal and are not reproduced here because they change. Check e-LORA for current fees before budgeting.

Questions people ask

Does a CT scanner need an AERB licence?

Yes. Any institute operating a CT or X-ray unit in India must hold a Licence for Operation from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board under the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules 2004, obtained through the e-LORA portal. CT also requires an approved Radiation Safety Officer. Raydiac records the licence number and validity of each CT scanner during onboarding and asks for the renewed licence when the validity date approaches.

What is e-LORA?

e-LORA (electronic Licensing of Radiation Applications) is the AERB web portal through which an institute registers itself, declares its equipment and radiation workers, nominates a Radiation Safety Officer, applies for its Licence for Operation, and files renewals and decommissioning notices. Every step of the diagnostic radiology licensing process runs through it. Raydiac does not interact with e-LORA on a hospital's behalf; the licence remains the hospital's own obligation.

Does a teleradiology company or its radiologists need AERB approval?

No. AERB regulates the use of radiation-emitting equipment and the safety of the people who operate it. A radiologist reporting a CT remotely never enters the radiation area, does not operate the unit and is not a radiation worker at that site, so there is nothing for the radiologist or the platform to file. Raydiac's obligation is to check that the scanner it receives images from is licensed, which is why the licence number is captured at onboarding.

What does the Radiation Safety Officer actually do?

The RSO is the named person responsible for radiation safety at the institute: radiation worker monitoring, safe operating procedures, quality assurance records, incident reporting and correspondence with AERB. For CT the RSO must be approved by AERB, not just appointed by the hospital. Raydiac asks for the approved RSO's name during onboarding because an unapproved RSO usually means the licence itself is not in order.

What happens if the AERB licence expires while we keep scanning?

Operating a CT or X-ray unit without a valid Licence for Operation is a breach of the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules 2004. Beyond the regulatory exposure, an expired licence undermines every report produced from that unit in any later dispute. Renewals are filed on e-LORA before expiry. Raydiac keeps the validity date on the site record and asks the site administrator for the renewed licence before it lapses.

Can we move a licensed CT to another room or branch?

Not without going back through AERB. The licence is tied to the unit at a particular location with an approved layout and shielding. Relocating a unit, whether to another room or another branch, means the new location must be approved and the licence updated on e-LORA before the unit is used there. Raydiac treats a relocated scanner as a new source that needs fresh licence details at onboarding.

Sources

This guide is general information for hospitals, diagnostic centres and radiologists in India. It is not legal, tax or medical advice. Regulations change; check the primary source before acting, and see the medical disclaimer.