Designing tunable MEMS-based ionizing radiation dosimeter for healthcare applications

X-rays & other ionizing radiations have found wide applications in healthcare industry for imaging and diagnostic applications. However, prolonged exposures to such ionizing radiations cause severe distress to human body with sporadic events of diseases like skin cancer, leukemia etc. This has mandated the need to monitor the exposure dose of such radiations so that they don’t generate harmful effects. Normally, dose-area-product (DAP) dosimeters are regularly used to monitor radiation doses in hospital conditions. In this work, we propose a unique design involving the use of MEMS platform (microcantilevers) for determining the ionizing radiation dose. This novel design, involving a microcantilever-based platform with a coating of polymer exposed to ionizing radiation, would prove to be very cost effective and offers tuneability of the sensor response upon variation of ambient temperature. This work would be of immense interest to researchers and scientists working in the healthcare domain in addition to others having exposure to high energy ionizing radiation beams.