Technical note on quality control tests of dose calibrators

Overview

Quality control tests of dose calibrators are an integral part of routine practice in all departments of nuclear medicine. They should be carried out regularly to ensure their optimum performance at all times and to determine the rate and extend of any deterioration in time. However, when there is no additional software purchased for these particular purposes, data collecting, and subsequent processing could sometimes be a tedious and time-consuming process. Based on the requirements of clinical practice an efficient method was developed to facilitate data handling. The described technical solution enables direct reading of data from the dose calibrator to a computer (tablet, smartphone, etc.) and their subsequent immediate processing. A conversion unit using Bluetooth technology was designed for communication between the measuring device and the computer. Communication with the ionization chamber is controlled by a macro written in VBA (Visual basic for applications). The data loaded into Excel are subsequently processed and evaluated according to the user's requirements. The presented solution is cheap and easy to modify, its big advantage is the compatibility with MS Office, which is currently easily accessible to all users at nuclear medicine workplaces.

Keywords:

Curiementor – dose calibrator – Bluetooth – test of background response – test of precision – test of accuracy – Visual basic for aplications – VBA