Real-Time Low-Cost Personal Monitoring for Exposure to PM2.5 among Asthmatic Children: Opportunities and Challenges

This study aims to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of real-time personal monitoring of exposure to PM concentrations using low-cost sensors, in comparison to conventional data collection method based on fixed stations. PM2.5 data were measured every 5 min using a low-cost sensor attached to a bag carried by 47 asthmatic children living in the Seoul Metropolitan area between November 2019 and March 2020, along with the real-time GPS location, temperature, and humidity. The mobile sensor data were then matched with station-based hourly PM2.5 data using the time and location. Despite some uncertainty and inaccuracy of the sensor data, similar temporal patterns were found between the two sources of PM2.5 data on an aggregate level. However, average PM2.5 concentrations via personal monitoring tended to be lower than those from the fixed stations, particularly when the subjects were indoors, during nighttime, and located farther from the fixed station. On an individual level, a substantial discrepancy is observed between the two PM2.5 data sources while staying indoors. This study provides guidance to policymakers and researchers on improving the feasibility of personal monitoring via low-cost mobile sensors as an alternative or supplement to the conventional station-based monitoring.

The Quantified Self

This chapter presents an account of sousveillance and how we produce, monitor, and react to data relating to ourselves, thus creating a quantified self. The term sousveillance refers to the personal monitoring and management of one's life through self-generated data. Continuously tracking personal data via sensors and cameras, and recording and analyzing them, would allow a person to manage and memorialize everyday life. The key technological idea that research teams, companies and artists were exploring at the time was lifelogs. The ultimate aim is the simultaneous digitization of all cognitive inputs experienced by the brain via all five human senses to create a digital parallel memory of the lived experiences of a person. However, lifelogs raise a series of ethical and legal questions that were largely being bypassed. Lifelogs would make an authoritarian, Big Brother society easier to put in place and more difficult to overthrow. At the same time as people became interested in sousveillance and lifelogs, so-called 'intimate technologies' — that is, digital tech that are in service to the individual, such as smartphones and wearable computing — started to grow enormously in popularity. These were complemented, and supported, by what might be termed 'scopophilic technologies', that is, digital tech that enable pleasure in looking and being looked at.

Evaluation of Patient Exposure After an Emergency Warm-Up of the CT X-Ray Tube

Summary A survey was performed to evaluate patient exposure after a procedure for the CT X-ray tube’s emergency warm-up, with the patient positioned on the table within the CT gantry. Three CT units, situated in three different University hospitals, were included in the survey. The evaluation was performed with AGFA personal monitoring films to visualize the results and discuss them with the radiographers who operate the systems. Additional measurements were performed with the RaySafe X2 system to demonstrate the presence of exposure. The air kerma resulting from implementing the warm-up protocol was evaluated to be higher than 112 μGy, 409 μGy, and 807 μGy for each of the CT units. Those values were underestimated because of the dosimetry equipment used and the methodology. A discussion between medical staff, engineers, and medical physicist was initiated. The practice with unnecessary patient exposure was terminated.