Study of dosimetric observables to be used in Active Pixel Sensor based devices for Interventional Radiology applications

Interventional radiologists and staff members, during all their professional activities, are frequently exposed to protracted low doses of ionizing radiation. The authors present a novel approach to perform on line monitoring of the staff during interventional procedures by using a device based on a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS). The sensor performance as an X-ray radiation detector has been evaluated with a dedicated experimental set-up and dosimetric observables have been assessed from the frames acquired by the sensor using a purposely designed algorithm. A data reduction strategy has also been implemented without significant loss of the performances. Finally a linear correlation with dosimetric measurements made using TLDs has been verified.