A Radium Dosage Calculator

Abstract

In the clinical use of radium, it is of the utmost importance that the radium should be so distributed as to give a field of radiation as nearly uniform as possible, and of the required intensity at every point of the region under treatment. In actual practice, it is only possible to obtain a rough approximation to uniformity, but the greater the skill of the operator the closer will be his approximation and the more satisfactory the result obtained. It therefore becomes of importance to work out the distribution of radiation for certain distributions of radium of common occurence, so that this known distribution may be used as a basis for clinical practice. The exact calculation, even in the case of a single needle, involves a complicated mathematical analysis, but by a simple method the radiation at any point can be ascertained with quite sufficient accuracy for clinical purposes, even in quite complicated distributions of radium. A specially divided scale is employed so constructed that for a milligram...