Mission Statement

The goal of this project is to develop a system:

to monitor patient radiation dose during interventional fluoroscopic procedures

to provide real-time graphic feedback concerning patient dose to the physician

to provide documentation of the skin-dose distribution for patient records

 

Current Status

We have developed a real-time, visually-represented dose tracking system that provides operator feedback during an interventional x-ray procedure. The system has been interfaced to both a ceiling-mounted and a floor-mounted fluoroscopic C-Arm unit. Signals from the units provide information on the radiation output and the position of the beam relative to the patient. A computer graphics display dynamically shows the beam projection and cumulative skin dose on a patient model during the x-ray procedure The display includes the fluoroscopic c-arm gantry, the patient table and a patient model with an outline of the current x-ray beam projection. To illustrate cumulative skin dose, areas of exposure on the virtual representation of the patient's body are color coded by magnitude. A graphic further shows the radiation intensity at the patient skin for the current beam projection. The system is comprised of real time data acquisition, computation, and graphic display. The present system uses analog or digital output signals from the fluoroscopic unit. We have begun the development of independent positional sensors so this display system can be retrofit to other units. All data is recorded for post-procedure review and visual playback and can be printed out for hardcopy documentation.

 

Screenshots & Pictures

Fig. 1 - Screen capture of the X-ray dose monitoring software