Spatial localization of radioactive sources is currently a main issue interesting different fields, including nuclear industry, homeland security as well as medical imaging. It is currently achieved using different systems, but the development of technologies for detecting and characterizing radiation is becoming important especially in medical imaging. In this latter field, radiation detection probes have long been used to guide surgery, thanks to their ability to localize and quantify radiopharmaceutical uptake even deep in tissue. Radiolabelled colloid is injected into, or near to, the tumor and the surgeon uses a hand-held radiation detector, the gamma probe, to identify lymph nodes with radiopharmaceutical uptkake.The present work refers to a novel scintigraphic goniometric probe to identify gamma radiation and its direction. The probe incorporates several scintillation crystals joined together in a particular configuration to provide data related to the position of a gamma source. The main technical 1Corresponding author.
The aim of this systematic review is to undertake a critical appraisal of the evidence in the published literature concerning the conversion factors between kerma-area product (PKA) and effective/organ dose (DCED_PKA, DCHT_PKA) for cardiac interventional fluoroscopy procedures performed in adults and paediatric patients and to propose reference conversion factors to help standardize dose calculations. A search strategy utilizing MeSH headings in three databases identified 59 (adult) and 37 (paediatric) papers deemed eligible for the review. Exclusion criteria were adopted to select data only from publications which established DCED_PKA in patients using the ICRP103 tissue weighting factors. A time restriction from January 2007 was introduced in the search to capture the evolving trends of utilization of fluoroscopy-guided intervention technologies only in recent years. The suggested DCED_PKA and DCHT_PKA were synthesized by calculating the weighted averages of the values reported by the authors with weights corresponding to the study sample size. Eighteen studies for both adult (9) and paediatric (9) patients matching the search terms fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The suggested value for DCED_PKA in adult patients amounts to 0.24 mSvGy-1cm-2. The suggested values for DCHT_PKA ranged from a minimum of 0.15 mSvGy-1cm-2 for the female breast to a maximum of 0.97 mSvGy-1cm-2 for the lungs. The suggested values for DCED_PKA in paediatric patients ranged from 3.45 mSvGy-1cm-2 for the new-born to 0.49 mSvGy-1cm-2 in the 15-years age class. The suggested values for DCHT_PKA ranged from a minimum of 0.33 mSvGy-1cm-2 for bone marrow in the 15-years age class to a maximum of 11.49 mSvGy-1cm-2 for the heart in the new-born. To conclude, values of DCED_PKA/DCHT_PKA were provided for calculating effective/organ doses in cardiac interventional procedures. They can be useful for standardizing dose calculations, hence for comparison of the radiation detriment from different imaging procedures and in the framework of epidemiologic studies.
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