Author: Yona Choi, Kyo-tai Kim, Seungwoo Park, Dung Thi Tran 👨🔬
Affiliation: Gemss Health Care Inc,, Korea Institute of Radiological & Medical Sciences 🌍
Purpose: We developed shielding materials and a hybrid concept collimator for fluoroscopy to reduce the dose to normal tissues outside the treatment field, which are capable of quantifying dose rate and providing images.
Methods: Diagnostics machine C-arm used was the XPLUS-35 model of GEMSS Healthcare Inc., and the radiation dose and image were measured in the energy 80kVp and current 1mA range. The shielding material were manufactured by mixing BaSo4, PbO, CaCo3, and SiO2, which are well-known radiation shielding materials, through a nanoparticle process, and the sheets were attached to the step motor-based collimators with the thickness of the shielding sheets 2~ 12mm. For shielding evaluation, were measured three times for 1 minute using the AGMS-DM+ model of Radical, and compared. For basic image comparison, images were acquired with the Automatic Brightness Stabilizer (ABS) function turned off, and each image was quantified through MTF comparison.
Results: As a result of the MTF comparison, the dose in the shielded area was reduced to 1/4 of the prescribed dose at the current clinical dose level. The image quality in the shielded area was lower than that of the existing image, but the hidden image was visible enough to confirm the presence or absence of an object (the operator's hand). Further research is needed on the change in image penetration energy according to the treatment area.
Conclusion: In this study, we show the possibility of significant dose reduction using a shielding sheet in fluoroscopy. It can reduce the radiation dose to the operator's hand and reduce overexposure to the patient. In the future, this study will be used as a study that can be controlled in real time through the camera module.