GPI Seminar Series: Andreu Badal

Andreu Badal, FDA (Maryland, USA), A real­time radiation dose monitoring system for patients and staff during interventional fluoroscopy using a GPU­-accelerated Monte Carlo simulator and an automatic 3D localization system based on a depth camera.
Friday May 23rd, 10h, Sala de Juntes D4-012

A real­time radiation dose monitoring system for patients and staff during interventional fluoroscopy using a GPU­-accelerated Monte Carlo simulator and an automatic 3D localization system based on a depth camera

Abstract:

Radiation monitoring systems able to accurately track the radiation dose received by the patient and the medical staff during interventional fluoroscopy can be used to minimize the likelihood and severity of radiation-induced skin injuries and estimate the accumulated organ doses. We describe a method to monitor doses in real time using automatic sensors in the imaging room and a GPU­ accelerated computer simulator. The Monte Carlo simulation code MC­GPU is used to estimate patient and staff doses due to primary and scattered radiation. The geometrical configuration of the irradiation is automatically determined and updated using data from a depth camera that tracks the location and posture of each person in the imaging room. In a typical image acquisition, the patient and operator skin and organ dose maps can be displayed within 10 seconds with a peak skin dose error below 1%. This work demonstrates that accurate Monte Carlo simulations can be used to provide timely information regarding possible overdoses in real­time during fluoroscopic interventions.

Andreu's short bio: 
Andreu Badal (andreu.badal­soler@fda.hhs.gov) is a researcher at the Division of Imaging and Applied Mathematics of the Food and Drug Administration (Maryland, USA). Andreu obtained his physics degree at the University of Barcelona in 2002 and obtained his P.h.D in Nuclear Engineering in 2008 under the direction of Josep Sempau at the Institut de Tècniques Energètiques of the UPC. His main research interest is the development of simulation Monte Carlo tools applied to the field of medical images to the radiation dose received in x-ray image procedures and the optimisation of the image quality.