E xperimental Characterization of a Wireless Personal Sensor Node for the Dosimetry During Interventional Radiology Procedures
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks featuring portable devices are widely used for healthcare applications such as real-time patient monitoring. For such applications, design constraints are limited in the amount of energy, network capacity (short communication range and low bandwidth), and processing and memory resources in each node. In the framework of the real-time active pixel dosimetry project, the attention has been focused on the design of a dosimetric system for online dose monitoring of interventional radiology (IRad) operators. This paper describes the experimental characterization of the prototype used during several IRad procedures. The wireless link of the prototype has been characterized by measuring the packet error rate of the network in different scenarios: the worst obtained result was lower than 0.4%, which is acceptable for the specific application. The prototype has also been compared with a reference acquisition system to fully validate the system in operating condition. A linear correlation has been observed between the observables for all the working conditions. Moreover, the average pixel response could be used as an indicator of the goodness of the data acquisition for a given procedure showing that it does not depend on the procedure, hence on the particular spectrum of the diffused radiation. Finally, the measurement of absorbed dose (ÎźGy) has been calculated for different IRad procedures.