Experimental Characterization of a Personal Wireless Sensor Network for the Medical X-Ray Dosimetry

Wireless sensor networks are an important technology for large-scale monitoring, providing sensor measurements at high temporal and spatial resolution. In healthcare applications, a variety of system prototypes and commercial products have been designed and manufactured with the aim to provide an alternative and more efficient method for real-time operator monitoring during medical procedures. In the framework of the Real-Time Active Pixel Dosimetry project, the attention has been focused on dose monitoring of interventional radiology (IRad) operators. A sensor network has been developed, which consists of several personal sensor nodes (PSNs), monitoring the absorbed dose in different positions of the operator body (e.g., on the head or arms) and providing a measurement of the absorbed dose for each medical procedure. In this paper, we describe the first characterization of the final version of a system by measuring the radiation diagram and exposing the system to a direct X-ray beam showing a linearity of the response up to 3.3 mGy/s of dose rate. The system has been characterized during several IRad procedures when two PSNs have been simultaneously used in the network. The packet error rate of the network has been measured and the absorbed dose has been evaluated for each medical procedure, showing an uncertainty on the dose measurement lower than 10% with respect to the reference dosimetric devices.