Light-weight medical radiation shielding materials

Radiation shielding material built on melanin instead of lead.

Melanin absorbs energy across a broad band of wavelengths and dissipates it as heat. We refine the pigment to high purity, disperse it through a eco-friendly matrix, and process the composite into a sheet. The sheet is then cut and sewn into a prototype shielding garment, so the same material can be judged both as raw stock and as a wearable.

Three development targets define the programme.
Weight: a full garment set in the 1 kg class, against 5 kg or more for a conventional lead apron set - in an interventional suite that load sits on the clinician's spine for every case.
Composition: no lead at all, removing the toxicity and disposal burden that lead-based shielding carries with it.
Regulatory: clearance as a medical device under the classification that applies to shielding garments.

The material is at the development stage. Sheet fabrication methods and shielding performance are being iterated and measured to fix the final specification. Quantitative figures - shielding rate, lead equivalence, attenuation by tube voltage - will be confirmed after certification testing, and are not presented here as achieved performance.

At the booth, visitors can pick up the sheet samples and the prototype garment and judge the weight directly. Two further melanin materials are shown alongside: PHOTOSHIELD CORE, a high-purity melanin cosmetic ingredient supplied B2B, and MELANOIR BLACK, a melanin-pigmented tattoo and PMU ink.

We welcome conversations with interventional and radiology teams, garment and medical device manufacturers, facility integrators, distributors and research partners.

Note: the three product lines are separate and do not share raw materials.

Melanoir Co., Ltd. - official@melanoir.co.kr - melanoir.co.kr