someone wrote "just patronise me, i do smart on occasion"
I'd like to keep that theme going here, so let me know if i'm being a total ass.
Just wondering whether it would be possible to use a loop of something which reacts to radiation by producing electricity? so kind of like how an incident photon will cause a current for a solar panel, harnessing the incident electron (beta) or wave (gamma) as alpha can't penetrate the skin.
This could be hooked to a loop of wire close to an implanted magnet in the finger which would mean that when the radiation induced the current in the material, this would be passed through the coil, causing the magnet to move. (maybe use a small capacitor to mean that only a voltage/current enough to induce movement in the magnet would be allowed through?)
geiger tubes already do the radiation=>electron conversion. The bad news is, those do not contain enough energy, plus they require a bias voltage of 300V and up. Long story short: you can't harvest enough energy from the radiation itself to provide feedback for the neurons.
Saw a VeriTeQ document today that lists the price of its DVS implantable dosimeter kit at $1200. This PDF was released to media and investors in late 2013.
I am working on building a NFC compliant radiation dosimeter and temperature sensor in an implantable package, if it works out it will be the same size as a standard RFID tag but you will be able to read you bodies temperature and cumulative radiation exposure (since time of install of course) from your cell phone. I know that their is room in the tag for the components its just a matter of getting it done at a cost level worth doing.
looks like I cant follow through with this one. the tiny radiation sensor is proprietary and they don't seem too keen to let me at it. any other ones I can find are way too big. also the VeriTeq is currently off the market. they were bought by another company and that company currently doesn't have the capitol to manufacture them.
Im still looking in to the thermal sensor. I know that I can get the info to push through an NFC communication interface its just sourcing the sensor at the moment.
I was recently directed to this thread and took a look at the study on the VeriTeQ dosimeter.
Short answer: This is of absolutely no use to biohackers because the dose rates it measures are many orders of magnitude higher than you'd ever experience unless you're receiving localized radiation therapy or have been exposed to lethal levels of radiation.
Long answer: According to the study:
The dosimeters are manufactured to be used in the energy range of 6–18 MV photons and up to 8,000 cGy. To assure accurate readings, daily dose per fraction should be in the range of 150–250 cGy.
These numbers are not good.
First, photon energy. Gamma radiation can come in all sorts of energies. I'm assuming a biohacker would want an implanted dosimeter to measure exposure to fission products and activation products, e.g. what you'd find in Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc. The predominant long-term fission product you'd encounter is Cs-137, which emits 662 KeV gammas. The detector is designed to measure in the 6-18 MeV range. So this is an order of magnitude less energy than the detector was designed to measure. Another dangerous activation product, Co-60, gives off 1.17 and 1.33 MeV gammas. I-131, the stuff that gives you thyroid cancer shortly after a nuclear accident, primarily emits gammas at 364 KeV.
In this case, this dosimeter is designed to measure gammas from a linear accelerator used for radiation therapy, which is entirely the wrong range that you'd experience in a nuclear disaster. So unless you do radiation therapy for a living, or, say, are an astronaut and experience high energy cosmic rays, you're not likely to encounter anything in the 6-18 MeV range that would be a threat.
Second, the dose. It assumes 150-250 cGy per day. Let me put that in perspective. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation) the average American receives a dose of 3.1 mSv per year from natural sources. Assuming 1 Gy = 1 Sv (there's subtle differences, but bear with me), in one year you'd expect to receive 0.31 cGy exposure. So per day, that's 0.00085 cGy. And the detector is designed to measure 150-250 cGy per day. In other words, that's a difference of more than 5 orders of magnitude! Even doing crazy stuff in Chernobyl isn't going to register on a dosimeter that insensitive. If you took a whole body dose of 150-250 cGy, you'd be experiencing radiation sickness.
I love the idea of an implantable dosimeter, but even if you could get your hands on this, it's not going to give you any useful info.
Comments
someone wrote "just patronise me, i do smart on occasion"
I'd like to keep that theme going here, so let me know if i'm being a total ass.
Just wondering whether it would be possible to use a loop of something which reacts to radiation by producing electricity? so kind of like how an incident photon will cause a current for a solar panel, harnessing the incident electron (beta) or wave (gamma) as alpha can't penetrate the skin.
This could be hooked to a loop of wire close to an implanted magnet in the finger which would mean that when the radiation induced the current in the material, this would be passed through the coil, causing the magnet to move. (maybe use a small capacitor to mean that only a voltage/current enough to induce movement in the magnet would be allowed through?)
Short answer: This is of absolutely no use to biohackers because the dose rates it measures are many orders of magnitude higher than you'd ever experience unless you're receiving localized radiation therapy or have been exposed to lethal levels of radiation.
Long answer: According to the study:
The dosimeters are manufactured to be used in the energy range of 6–18 MV photons and up to 8,000 cGy. To assure accurate readings, daily dose per fraction should be in the range of 150–250 cGy.
These numbers are not good.
First, photon energy. Gamma radiation can come in all sorts of energies. I'm assuming a biohacker would want an implanted dosimeter to measure exposure to fission products and activation products, e.g. what you'd find in Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc. The predominant long-term fission product you'd encounter is Cs-137, which emits 662 KeV gammas. The detector is designed to measure in the 6-18 MeV range. So this is an order of magnitude less energy than the detector was designed to measure. Another dangerous activation product, Co-60, gives off 1.17 and 1.33 MeV gammas. I-131, the stuff that gives you thyroid cancer shortly after a nuclear accident, primarily emits gammas at 364 KeV.
In this case, this dosimeter is designed to measure gammas from a linear accelerator used for radiation therapy, which is entirely the wrong range that you'd experience in a nuclear disaster. So unless you do radiation therapy for a living, or, say, are an astronaut and experience high energy cosmic rays, you're not likely to encounter anything in the 6-18 MeV range that would be a threat.
Second, the dose. It assumes 150-250 cGy per day. Let me put that in perspective. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation) the average American receives a dose of 3.1 mSv per year from natural sources. Assuming 1 Gy = 1 Sv (there's subtle differences, but bear with me), in one year you'd expect to receive 0.31 cGy exposure. So per day, that's 0.00085 cGy. And the detector is designed to measure 150-250 cGy per day. In other words, that's a difference of more than 5 orders of magnitude! Even doing crazy stuff in Chernobyl isn't going to register on a dosimeter that insensitive. If you took a whole body dose of 150-250 cGy, you'd be experiencing radiation sickness.
I love the idea of an implantable dosimeter, but even if you could get your hands on this, it's not going to give you any useful info.