Skin dose measurement for patients using imaging plates in interventional radiology procedures.

A method using europium-doped BaFBr imaging plates (IPs) has been developed to estimate and map values of entrance skin doses during interventional radiology (IR). IPs offer many advantages for measuring the entrance skin dose because they have a wide dynamic range (up to 100 Gy), provide high spatial resolution as a detector of two-dimensional images, and can be used repeatedly. The entrance skin dose was measured by fitting a 40x40 cm IP sheet around a patient's back using a corset in clinical studies involving IR procedures at two hospitals. The corset can minimize a geometric discrepancy in dose estimates between the IP and the patient body. The entrance skin dose was measured by using photoluminescent glass dosimeters simultaneously, and both values were compared. The spatial relative dose profiles from both dose estimates showed generally good agreement; however, the doses obtained with glass dosimeter chips were often lower than those obtained with IPs. This discrepancy comes from a radiation shielding effect for x rays by IPs and a strong angular dependence of the glass dosimeter in low energy x-ray fields. Comprehensive results of this study demonstrated that IPs were able to measure entrance skin dose in even high dose regions with steep dose gradients and to determine the peak skin dose, without missing hot spots, over all ranges used during interventional radiology procedures. Use of the corset minimized variations associated with angular dependence.