Wearable Dosimeters for Medical and Defence Applications: A State of the Art Review

Wearable dosimeters form an essential part of the personnel protection scheme in work spaces such as defence, nuclear establishments, and medical fields with radiation hazard. In the current scenario where use of high energy ionizing radiation sources (nuclear sources) is indispensable, the need of radiation detectors is mandatory for measuring the dose received by the person exposed in his work space and also measure the dose for patients where nuclear radiation is used for treatment. Wearable dosimeters need to have some special requirements apart from being accurate, precise, and robust. These need to be light in weight and should cause no harm to the human body while it is touching the body or apparels. This paper comprises an introduction to dosimeters, key characteristics, important techniques used for detection of neutrons and X‐rays and also mentions about a few potential companies involved in developing wearable dosimeters in these application areas. The techniques have been collated, described, compared and the need to detect neutrons and X‐rays has been expressed keeping in mind the demand from the defence and medical disciplines. This review also contains artificial intelligence and internet of things which form the basis of trending and upcoming wearable dosimeters. The manuscript is a state of the art review of wearable dosimeters for detection of X‐rays and neutrons. It discusses the fundamental aspects of the dosimeters, recent advancements in materials, sensing techniques, emergence of artificial intelligence and internet of things in dosimeters and also provides a concise description of commercial dosimeters.