DEVELOPMENT OF 5 DOF ROBOTIC ARM PROTOTYPE CONTROL SYSTEM IN BRACHYTHERAPY PREPARATION BASED ON ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

Brachytherapy is a cancer treatment that uses radioactive sources with temporary or permanent implantation in cancer tissue. The theraphy uses a radioactive Ir-192 source wrapped in a stainless steel capsule with a diameter of 0.5 mm and a length of 4 mm. The Center for Radioisotopes and Radiopharmaceutical Technology applies a remote manipulator to manufacture microcapsules, which affects the accuracy and risks of the radiation received by the operator. Therefore, to solve this problem, it is necessary to design a 5 DoF robotic arm based on artificial neural networks as a radioactive source transfer tool to improve the precision and safety of operators in preparing the radioactive sources. In developing the 5 DoF robotic arm control system, the NImyRIO was employed, which can control the servo motor, relay pump and valve reality, image processing, and inverse kinematic. The inverse kinematic uses the neural network method with a forward kinematic validation. The inverse kinematic test obtains the RMSE value of 2.78932 for x, 5.05205 for y, and 12.641 for z in the inverse kinematic test of artificial neural networks. Therefore, the inverse kinematic accuracy of the artificial neural network needs to be redeveloped.

Safety Culture in Handling Radioactive Materials for Radiation Practitioners: A Review

This paper reviews the safety culture in handling radioactive sources. Safety culture refers to how safety is addressed and communicated in the workplace. It encompasses the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values of all employees in an organization in relation to safety. A good safety culture can be promoted by management through commitment to safety, realistic practices for handling hazards, continuous organizational learning and concern for hazards shared across the workforce. The radioactive substances used should comply with the following characteristics where radiotoxicity must be as low as possible, short-living isotopes are preferred than long-living ones and the amounts used must be kept to a minimum. Therefore, the ‘As Low As Reasonably Achievable’ (ALARA) principle was applied that based on the minimization of radiation doses and limiting the release of radioactive materials into the environment by employing all reasonable methods. Besides that, the ALARA principle is an integral part of all activities that involve the use of radiation or radioactive materials and can help prevent unnecessary exposure as well as overexposure. The three major ALARA principles to assist with maintaining doses are time, distance and shielding. It takes a whole team effort to successfully implement the ALARA in safety culture while doing routine element of working in handling radioactive materials.

Design Analysis of Radiation Shielding Door in High-Level Waste Treatment Plant

In high-level waste treatment plants, rooms where the highly radioactive sources (such as the vitrification containers) are operated have high radiation protection risk. On the purpose of ensuring the safety of operators, it is necessary to design corresponding shielding walls, windows and shielding doors to guarantee that the dose rate at the personal operating location outside the room meets corresponding control requirements. Compared with walls, the radiation safety designs of the doors and windows are more complicated. In this article, a shielding door of a hot room inside a high-level waste treatment plant is selected. By means of combing the source characteristics and the source location, the gap between the door and door frame as well as the lap joints of the door and the wall are analyzed in order to characterize the influence factor of the dose rate outside the shielding door. The results illustrate that, under the premise that the shielding design requirements are satisfied, the lap joint between shielding wall and door has a significant impact on the outdoor dose field due to the oblique incidence of the radiation ray. Therefore, in the follow-up design of the radiation shielding door, A certain overlap form of the lap joints between the door and the wall need to be satisfied, furthermore, special attention need to be paid to the shielding of radioactive sources with weak self-shielding effect and strong penetration ability, for ensuring the shielding door to the greatest extent radiation protection ability.

Synthesis of Poly[Allyl Chloride - Co Acrylic Acid] Polymers for Nucleic Track Detection from Alpha Particles

This paper describes the synthesis and development of new polymers for solid state nuclear trak detector of two novel poly Allyl cloride – co Acrylic acid and diethanol amine of polymeric detectors of alpha charged particle tracks. The detectors were irradiated by two radioactive sources, Amercium (Am-240) and Polonium (Po-210) for 5 hours, and traces of alpha particles were seen in the microscope and their diameters were measured. The results showed the density of tracks of alpha particles from (Am-240) and (Po-210) are 295.86, 655.33 respectively, while the average of their diameters are 5.83, 4.78 respectively.

New Algorithm for Upgrading of Portal Radiation Monitors with Plastic Detectors Part 2. Optimization of Values of Alarming Threshold and Smoothing

The way of improving of traditional algorithm for portal radiation monitors with plastic detectors by optimization of values of alarming threshold and smoothing is discussed in the second part of the article. As the result of such optimization the probability of detection of radioactive sources may be significantly increased and probability of false alarms decreased as well.