Comparison of surface contamination monitors for in vivo measurement of 131I in the thyroid

Abstract

The routine handling of radiopharmaceuticals in nuclear medicine represents a significant risk of internal exposure to the staff. The IAEA recommends the implementation of monitoring plans for all workers subject to a risk of exposures above 1 mSv per year. However, in Brazil, such recommendation is practically unfeasible due to the lack of a sufficient number of qualified internal dosimetry services over the country. This work presents an alternative based on a simple and inexpensive methodology aimed to perform in vivo monitoring of 131I in the thyroid using portable surface contamination probes. Results show that all models evaluated in this work present enough sensitivity for the evaluation of accidental intakes.