Abstract
The background induced by the high penetration power of the γ radiation is the main limiting factor of the current radio-guided surgery (RGS). To partially mitigate it, a RGS with β+ -emitting radio-tracers has been suggested in literature. Here we propose the use of β- -emitting radio-tracers and β- probes and discuss the advantage of this method with respect to the previously explored ones: the electron low penetration power allows for simple and versatile probes and could extend RGS to tumours for which background originating from nearby healthy tissue makes γ probes less effective. We developed a β- probe prototype and studied its performances on phantoms. By means of a detailed simulation we have also extrapolated the results to estimate the performances in a realistic case of meningioma, pathology which is going to be our first in-vivo test case. A good sensitivity to residuals down to 0.1 ml can be reached within 1 s with an administered activity smaller than those for PET-scans thus making the radiation exposure to medical personnel negligible.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 4401 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Volume | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 20 2014 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General
- Medicine(all)