Comparison of surface contamination monitors for in vivo measurement of 131I in the thyroid

The routine handling of radiopharmaceuticals in nuclear medicine represents a significant risk of internal exposure to the staff. The IAEA recommends the implementation of monitoring plans for all workers subject to a risk of exposures above 1 mSv per year. However, in Brazil, such recommendation is practically unfeasible due to the lack of a sufficient number of qualified internal dosimetry services over the country. This work presents an alternative based on a simple and inexpensive methodology aimed to perform in vivo monitoring of I-131 in the thyroid using portable surface contamination probes. Results show that all models evaluated in this work present enough sensitivity for the evaluation of accidental intakes.