Use of Active Personal Dosemeters in Interventional Radiology: A Systematic Study in Laboratory Conditions

The optimization of the use of active personal dosemeters (APDs) in interventional radiology is performed by one of the work packages of the ORAMED project (2008-2011), which is a Collaborative Project supported by the European Commission within its 7th Framework Program. Interventional radiology procedures can be very complex and they can lead to relatively high doses to medical staff who stand close to the primary radiation field and are mostly exposed to radiation scattered by the patient. For the adequate dosimetry of these scattered photons, APDs must be able to respond to low-energy [10-100 keV] and pulsed radiation with relatively high instantaneous dose rates. Very few devices can detect low energy radiation fields and none of them are specially designed for working in pulsed radiation fields. The work presented in this paper is aimed at 1) studying the radiation field characteristics encountered in interventional radiology 2) making a selection of APDs deemed suitable for application in interventional radiology 3) defining, by measurements under laboratory conditions, the dose, the energy, the dose rate and the angular response of the selected APDs.