Abstract
Less invasive imaging-guided vascular interventions with fluoroscopy and digital subtraction angiography have recently become widespread and have been successfully used for treating various diseases. However, interventional fluoroscopy procedures may present deterministic and stochastic radiation risks. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and the Food and Drug Administration have requested identifying procedures that may involve patient doses greater than the recommended thresholds. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced a new project to track radiation exposure from medical diagnostic procedures. In this study, radiochromic dosimetric media, known as self-developing films, and measurement-based Monte Carlo simulations were used to establish an interventional radiology dosing system for individual patients undergoing interventional transcatheter arterial embolization. We investigated the characteristics of gafchromic films, and successfully inputed dose distribution of the measured films from clinical situation to Monte Carlo simulation. A 3D dose map incorporated into CT images was established. Then k-mean clustering method played the role based on the cluster analysis with the nearest mean for the local segmentation. We furthermore utilized the K-mean clustering to achieve the organ segmentation, and calculated the organ doses. The organ doses for individual patients were evaluated using this dosing system. This system could be applied very well to other fluoroscopic or interventional procedures for patient dose management.