Abstract
X-ray exposure management in medicine is not controlled strictly because of justification of medical procedures. However, appropriate management of X-ray exposure is desirable to prevent future radiation injury. FDA (Food and Drugs Administration) and ICRP (International Commission of Radiation Protection) published several recommendations regarding avoidance of radiation injury during IVR (Interventional Radiology) procedures. In this report, we will introduce the development of a scintillator-based dosimeter coupled with an optical fiber (SOF dosimeter) dedicated for skin exposure dose and trial use in the clinical setting.
The SOF dosimeter has good properties of dose linearity, dose rate dependency, angular dependency and energy dependency. Especially, energy dependency for X-ray tube voltage from 50 to 150 kVp is less than 3%. Since the SOF probe consists of plastic, the probe is not visualized in a fluoroscopic image. This contributes to real-time dosimetry without interfering with the IVR procedure. Skin cumulative dose measurement was performed for 54 hepatocellular cancer (HCC) patients undergoing transarterial chemoembolization (TACE), Kerma air product (KAP) and fluoroscopic time are not simply proportional to skin dose measured with the SOF dosimeter.
The SOF dosimeter will contribute not only to patient skin dosimetry but also the operator’s exposure dose management. As future work, we will establish a comprehensive dosimetry system during IVR procedures using the SOF dosimeter.
