Authors: (including presenting author): :
Chan TL, Tam YHJ, Tang F, Ng S
Affiliation: :
Medical Physics Unit, Department of Clinical Oncology, Queen Mary Hospital
Introduction: :
A construction started near a building which storages a sealed radioactive source Caesium-137 for blood irradiator, there is a risk of cracking of the radiation shielding inside the blood irradiator by the construction-induced vibration, this will cause radiation incident by external radiation exposure and spreading out of radioactive particulates if the seal is broken. This is no such a commercial product in the market, providing a highly customized monitoring and alerting system which can safeguard the health and safety of employees effectively on a twenty-four seven basis.
Objectives: :
To develop and implement an in-house remote monitoring system and alerting system to monitor on external radiation exposure and radioactive particulates and provide preventive measures to mitigate the radiological hazard.
Methodology: :
A dust barrier is used to obtain a closed area to control the spreading out of radioactive particulates and minimize the radiological hazard. An air particulate radiation monitor is set up inside. The air monitor is customized with a combination of an air sampler and a radiation monitor for gamma radiation only since Caesium-137 is the only concerned radiation substance, in order to hold the probe of radiation monitor, a home-made mount is made.
This setup discriminates incident between a single shielding damage event and an airborne radiation event when both the shielding and the encapsulation are broken.
The monitors are connected to an edge mini-computer, Raspberry Pi 3B+ (Raspberry Pi Foundation, UK) through Ethernet cables and to a 4G-sim router. The mini-computer collects and restructures the data and uploads to an in-house developed cloud I.O.T. server.
The cloud server centralizes, restructures and stores the measurement data. It raises alarm when the radiation level exceeds pre-set threshold values. Automated alert notification e-mails are sent to physicists and related management staff for corresponding actions.
Users can login to a frontend dashboard to access the live-updating measurement figures and time series plots which are updated every minute.
Result & Outcome: :
An In-house Developed Radiation Level Remote Monitoring and Alerting System for Blood Irradiator was developed to ensure the radiation safety and efficiently monitored by an in-house developed cloud based I.O.T. system. The system is developed generically which can be applied to other monitoring devices in remote locations or satellite hospitals in the future.
