Mobile-Dose: a Compact and Flexible Dose-Meter Suitable for Gamma Source Classification and Nuclear Medicine Dose Calibration

Mobile-Dose has been originally conceived as a common tool available in the section of Naples of the "Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare" (INFN), to periodically measure the activity of the gamma sources present on site. Developed under the auspicious of a spin-off program between the "Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia" (INFM) and the INFN, its design made the instrument suitable for a medical use too: thanks to the kind and the dimensions of the ionization chamber chosen, the detector is able to accept both vials and syringes typically used in nuclear medicine. In this way the fields of application of Mobile-Dose have been so extended to the nuclear medicine diagnosis, like gamma rays diagnosis, PET and so on. The instrument is based on a lead shielded, maintenance-less cylindrical ionization chamber with pressurized argon as sensitive gas and an embedded custom-designed, ultra sensitive digital electrometer (sensitivity 50 fA, response time <0.2 s). Operations are possible via a user-friendly operator panel with touch screen capabilities or a specifically designed virtual instrument (VI) developed in National Instrument LabVIEWtrade language. The latter allows more flexibility, going from the remote accessibility to the data logging and archiving features. Integration with commercial existing databases (like Oracle, MS-Access, SQL Server) is easily possible, allowing the design of a complete station for the measure and the classification in patients treatments. The operator panel is also programmed to send measurements through an RS232 interface, to supply information to any possible external unit (e.g. PCs, PLCs), allowing operability in any automatic machinery able to handle radioactive materials without the human intervention.