Smart capsule monitors dose for radiotherapy

“The researchers found that the dosimeter was approximately five times more accurate than standard methods for dose determination,” according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, whose Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) worked with the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University.

5mm in diameter, the capsule has an optical fibre encapsulated with X-ray persistent lanthanide-doped nano-scintillators, a pH-sensitive polyaniline film and a wireless readout circuit.

“By using a neural-network-based regression model, we estimated the radiation dose from radioluminescence and afterglow intensity and temperature,” according to a scientific paper (below) that describes the capsule.

“In the future, this capsule could be placed in the rectum for prostate cancer brachytherapy or in the upper nasal cavity for real-time measurement of the absorbed dose in nasopharyngeal carcinoma,” said professor Sheng Zonghai, one of the authors.

The paper is ‘A swallowable X-ray dosimeter for the real-time monitoring of radiotherapy‘, published in Nature Biomedical engineering.

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