Facilitating radiation leak detection: Designing a low-cost, wearable Geiger-Müller alarm for medical personnel

الملخص

Occupational exposure to ionising radiation remains a major safety concern in imaging and nuclear medicine departments, where even small, unnoticed leaks from X-ray tubes, shielding defects, or mishandled radionuclides can accumulate into unnecessary dose for medical personnel. Conventional passive dosimeters provide only retrospective information, while commercial electronic personal dosimeters are often too costly to be deployed widely in resource-constrained healthcare systems. This paper presents the conceptual design of a low-cost, wearable radiation leak alarm intended to facilitate real-time leak detection for frontline medical personnel.The proposed device integrates a compact Geiger–Müller (GM) tube with a high-voltage bias circuit, a low-power ESP32 microcontroller, an OLED display, and a Li-Po battery in a lightweight clip-on enclosure. Firmware routines perform interrupt-based pulse counting, convert count rate into an approximate ambient dose-equivalent rate H\*(10)H^\*(10)H\*(10), and trigger audible and visual alarms when user-defined dose-rate thresholds associated with potential leakage conditions are exceeded. A calibration and testing protocol is outlined using a low-activity potassium chloride check source and a traceable survey meter to derive a device specific conversion factor between counts per minute and dose rate over the range relevant for leak detection. While full experimental and clinical validation are planned as future work, the proposed architecture demonstrates a practical and affordable pathway towards complementing conventional passive dosimetry with real-time, wearable leak alarms, thereby strengthening radiation protection practices for medical personnel in low- and middle-income healthcare settings. Download full text