Continuous monitoring of radiation emissions from 131I thyroid cancer ablation subjects: development of a novel radiation detector system and measurement of effective retention half-time in 250 subjects.

Objectivess: I. Methods: I over the one to three days typical inpatient admission. The data are saved in text format and have been fitted with a mono-exponential curve to measure retention half time. Results: (Eff)=14.4 hrs) (P=0.0007). Conclusions: Despite the subjects, being free to move around the isolation room during admission and thus changing the source-detector geometry markedly, the system has been able to characterise their retention profiles after radioiodine treatment. These real-time measurements have applications in planning therapy and monitoring the subjects during their admission to the hospital and can be used for "live" updates for all staff as well as providing insights into the fate of radioiodine in the body.