Abstract
Exposure levels to staff in interventional radiology (IR) may be significant and appropriate assessment of radiation doses is needed. Issues regarding measurements using physical dosemeters in the clinical environment still exist. The objective of this work was to explore the prerequisites for assessing staff radiation dose, based on simulations only.Personal dose equivalent, Hp(10), was assessed using simulations based on Monte Carlo methods. The position of the operator was defined using a 3D motion tracking system. X-ray system exposure parameters were extracted from the x-ray equipment. The methodology was investigated and the simulations compared to measurements during IR procedures.The results indicate that the differences between simulated and measured staff radiation doses, in terms of the personal dose equivalent quantity Hp(10), are in the order of 30–70 %. The results are promising but some issues remain to be solved, e.g. an automated tracking of movable parts such as the ceiling-mounted protection shield.
Highlights
Occupational radiation protection in the medical sector continues to require attention, especially in interventional radiology (IR) where levels of exposure to the staff may be significant[1,2,3]
In case B, it could be seen from the positioning data that the operator moved during the image acquisition, and the distance for the final three frames was ∼1–1.5 m from the patient, compared to their starting position which was much closer to the patient
The total radiation doses measured with the two dosemeters are included in Table 2, the average personal equivalent dose was 5 μSv
Summary
Occupational radiation protection in the medical sector continues to require attention, especially in interventional radiology (IR) where levels of exposure to the staff may be significant[1,2,3]. Individual assessment of radiation dose to staff is important when optimising radiation protection and certifying compliance with radiation dose limits. E.g. angular dependence, further influence the uncertainties and can be a challenge for making accurate assessments of whole-body dose, equivalent dose to the skin and equivalent dose to the lens of the eye. Due to the inhomogeneous radiation field, proper placement of the dosemeter on the body is crucial and several dosemeters may be required. These rather complicated procedures for wearing dosemeters are often not fully complied with by the staff. Optimisation of radiological protection requires radiation doses to be evaluated in detail after a limited number of procedures have been performed. It will be possible to estimate organ absorbed doses, e.g. equivalent dose to the lens of the eye using this computational method
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