Two commercial intraoperative gamma probes response to different measurement conditions: comparative analysis

Abstract

Intraoperative gamma radiation probes are increasingly used for localization of sentinel lymph node. Some technical parameters, such as directionality, sensitivity and dead-time effects, which determine the performance to various measurement conditions of two probes, are analyzed in this paper. The sensitivity strongly depends on the source-probe distance, and the type of probe used. It is also shown a suitable angular and spatial resolution, and not noticeable dead time effects are expected on clinical activity levels. The presented tests are simple and reproducible in establishing regular quality controls.