Radiation Levels at SPECT Bone Scan.
My small photo/video report about Bone SPECT Scan I did today. The examination was done in Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital (Jerusalem). I was injected with radioactive isotope of Technetium-99m and after 3 hours my body was scanned with Gamma Camera. I have my DIY Geiger Counter in my bag and I did some radiation levels logs. Right after the injection my body produced about 20K-25K CPM (100uSv/h average) at 1 feet distance! The radiation level goes down after several hours, but even after 7 hours is stay hot.
You can find more technical info about Geiger Counter Hardware and Logger Software at:
http://www.rhelectronics.net/store/diy-geiger-counter-kit.html
10 minutes after the injection.
1 hour after the injection. Radiation level depend on the distance from my body. At 10 meters I registered about 90 CPM and at 30cm (1 feet) is very high (17K-20K CPM!) I drank a lot of water to allow the isotope to spread over the body. I mute the buzzer sound because the dosimeter "goes crazy" and may disturb the hospital workers and visitors.
After several hours the scan was done all my dosimeters at home still detect high levels at 1 meter from me. I will attach logs files. You can open it to see the graphs with "Radiation Logger" Software or with any csv files editor. I used my phone to create this videos that's why it has low resolution quality.
The graph log screenshot: You can see the difference in CPM readings depend on the distance I marked. Download logs files
And some Hadassah Radiology Hospital photos:
Update 18/03/13:
30 hours from the injection of the Technetium-99m and my body is still produce gamma radiation. Log file attached. During the day I felt weak and mild nausea.
Regards the Wikipedia all total radiation dose I received is about 10mSv (30mCi or 1000mrem or 500 chest X-Ray). Its probably may affect my blood count but to check this its necessary to do a blood test.
P.S.
I asked the technicians who did the scan if the radiation dose from this medicine examination is high or low and they said it's not significant total dose, but it seem not to be like that (regards the CPM readings I got)! Its not seems to be low level also because all radiation detectors around goes crazy from 5 meters distance. Probably the technicians were instructed not to cause panic among patients.
