Estimating radiation exposure in interventional environments.

In the last decade the use of interventional X-ray imaging, especially for fluoroscopy-guided procedures, has increased dramatically. Due to this the radiation exposure of the medical staff has also increased. Although radiation protection measures such as lead vests are used there are still unprotected regions, most notably the hands and the head. Over time these regions can receive significant amounts of radiation. In this paper we propose a system for approximating the radiation exposure of a physician during surgery. The goal is to sensibilize physicians to their radiation exposure and to give them a tool to quickly check it. To this end we use a real-time 3D reconstruction system which builds a 3D-representation of all the objects in the room. The reconstructed 3D-representation of the physician is then tracked over time and at each time step in which the X-Ray source is used the radiation received by each body part is accumulated. To simulate the radiation we use a physics-based simulation package. The physician can review his radiation exposure after the intervention and use the collected radiation information over a longer time period in order to minimize his radiation exposure by adjusting his positioning relative to the X-ray source. The system can also be used as an awareness tool for less experienced physicians.