A real time active pixel dosimeter for interventional radiology

The Interventional Radiology (IR) is a well established technique in medical domain aiming to obtain a good X-ray image quality while minimizing the radiation dose absorbed by patients and staff members. From a radioprotection point of view, these procedures are considered potentially harmful for interventional radiologists and medical staff. Individual monitoring of operators is very important and is performed by assessing effective dose, equivalent dose to the extremities and eye lens, with the use of passive dosimeters (e.g. TLDs) calibrated in terms of personal dose equivalent H-P (10), H-P (0.07) and H-P (3), respectively. In this work we will present a proposal for an innovative X-ray dosimeter prototype, capable of real-time measurements, packaged in a small form-factor, with wireless communication to be used for individual operators dosimetry during IR procedures. The proposed real-time dosimeter relies on CMOS Active Pixel Sensor, widely used in visible imaging applications. Some preliminary results on the characterization of CMOS active pixel sensors as diffused X-ray detectors during a typical IR session will be presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.