• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제38권3호
• /
• pp.239-250
• /
• 2006

Computational anthropomorphic phantoms are computer models of human anatomy used in the calculation of radiation dose distribution in the human body upon exposure to a radiation source. Depending on the manner to represent human anatomy, they are categorized into two classes: stylized and tomographic phantoms. Stylized phantoms, which have mainly been developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), describe human anatomy by using simple mathematical equations of analytical geometry. Several improved stylized phantoms such as male and female adults, pediatric series, and enhanced organ models have been developed following the first hermaphrodite adult stylized phantom, Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD)-5 phantom. Although stylized phantoms have significantly contributed to dosimetry calculation, they provide only approximations of the true anatomical features of the human body and the resulting organ dose distribution. An alternative class of computational phantom, the tomographic phantom, is based upon three-dimensional imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and computed tomography (CT). The tomographic phantoms represent the human anatomy with a large number of voxels that are assigned tissue type and organ identity. To date, a total of around 30 tomographic phantoms including male and female adults, pediatric phantoms, and even a pregnant female, have been developed and utilized for realistic radiation dosimetry calculation. They are based on MRI/CT images or sectional color photos from patients, volunteers or cadavers. Several investigators have compared tomographic phantoms with stylized phantoms, and demonstrated the superiority of tomographic phantoms in terms of realistic anatomy and dosimetry calculation. This paper summarizes the history and current status of both stylized and tomographic phantoms, including Korean computational phantoms. Advantages, limitations, and future prospects are also discussed.

• 대한방사선기술학회지:방사선기술과학
• /
• 제43권6호
• /
• pp.443-451
• /
• 2020

This study is to evaluate absorbed dose from right lung for brachytherapy and to estimate the effects of tissue heterogeneities on dose distribution for Iridium-192 source using Monte Carlo simulation. The study employed Geant4 code as Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the dosimetry parameters. The dose distribution of Iridium-192 source in solid water equivalent phantom including aluminium plate or steel plate inserted was calculated and compared with the measured dose by the ion chamber at various distances. And the simulation was used to evaluate the dose of gamma radiation absorbed in the lung organ and other organs around it. The dose distribution embedded in right lung was calculated due to the presence of heart, thymus, spine, stomach as well as left lung. The geometry of the human body was made up of adult male MIRD type of the computational human phantom. The dosimetric characteristics obtained for aluminium plate inserted were in good agreement with experimental results within 4%. The simulation results of steel plate inserted agreed well with a maximum difference 2.75%. Target organ considered to receive a dose of 100%, the surrounding organs were left the left lung of 3.93%, heart of 10.04%, thymus of 11.19%, spine of 12.64% and stomach of 0.95%. When the statistical error is performed for the computational human phantom, the statistical error of value is under 1%.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• 제47권3호
• /
• pp.111-133
• /
• 2022

The exciting advancement related to the "modeling of digital human" in terms of a computational phantom for radiation dose calculations has to do with the latest hype related to deep learning. The advent of deep learning or artificial intelligence (AI) technology involving convolutional neural networks has brought an unprecedented level of innovation to the field of organ segmentation. In addition, graphics processing units (GPUs) are utilized as boosters for both real-time Monte Carlo simulations and AI-based image segmentation applications. These advancements provide the feasibility of creating three-dimensional (3D) geometric details of the human anatomy from tomographic imaging and performing Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations using increasingly fast and inexpensive computers. This review first introduces the history of three types of computational human phantoms: stylized medical internal radiation dosimetry (MIRD) phantoms, voxelized tomographic phantoms, and boundary representation (BREP) deformable phantoms. Then, the development of a person-specific phantom is demonstrated by introducing AI-based organ autosegmentation technology. Next, a new development in GPU-based Monte Carlo radiation dose calculations is introduced. Examples of applying computational phantoms and a new Monte Carlo code named ARCHER (Accelerated Radiation-transport Computations in Heterogeneous EnviRonments) to problems in radiation protection, imaging, and radiotherapy are presented from research projects performed by students at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Finally, this review discusses challenges and future research opportunities. We found that, owing to the latest computer hardware and AI technology, computational human body models are moving closer to real human anatomy structures for accurate radiation dose calculations.

• 한국의학물리학회지:의학물리
• /
• 제33권4호
• /
• pp.172-179
• /
• 2022

Recently, tetrahedral phantoms have been newly adopted as international standard mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs) by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, and a program has been developed to convert them to computational tomography images and DICOM-RT structure files for application of radiotherapy. Through this program, the use of the tetrahedral standard phantom has become available in clinical practice, but utilization has been difficult due to various library dependencies requiring a lot of time and effort for installation. To overcome this limitation, in this study a newly developed TET2DICOM-GUI, a TET2DICOM program based on a graphical user interface (GUI), was programmed using only the MATLAB language so that it can be used without additional library installation and configuration. The program runs in the same order as TET2DICOM and has been optimized to run on a personal computer in a GUI environment. A tetrahedron-based male international standard human phantom, MRCP-AM, was used to evaluate TET2DICOM-GUI. Conversion into a DICOM-RT dataset applicable in clinical practice in about one hour with a personal computer as a basis was confirmed. Also, the generated DICOM-RT dataset was confirmed to be effectively implemented in the radiotherapy planning system. The program developed in this study is expected to replace actual patient data in future studies.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제55권1호
• /
• pp.295-303
• /
• 2023

Whole-body counters are widely used to assess internal contamination after a nuclear accident. However, it is difficult to determine radioiodine activity due to limitations in conventional calibration phantoms. Inhaled or ingested radioiodine is heterogeneously distributed in the human body, necessitating time-dependent biodistribution for the assessment of the internal contamination caused by the radioiodine intake. This study aims at calculating counting efficiencies considering the biodistribution of ¹³¹I in whole-body counting measurement. Monte Carlo simulations with computational human phantoms were performed to calculate the whole-body counting efficiency for a realistic radioiodine distribution after its intake. The biodistributions of ¹³¹I for different age groups were computed based on biokinetic models and applied to age- and gender-specific computational phantoms to estimate counting efficiency. After calculating the whole-body counting efficiencies, the efficiency correction factors were derived as the ratio of the counting efficiencies obtained by considering a heterogeneous biodistribution of ¹³¹I over time to those obtained using the BOMAB phantom assuming a homogeneous distribution. Based on the correction factors, the internal contamination caused by ¹³¹I can be assessed using whole-body counters. These correction factors can minimize the influence of the biodistribution of ¹³¹I in whole-body counting measurement and improve the accuracy of internal dose assessment.

• 한국의학물리학회지:의학물리
• /
• 제23권3호
• /
• pp.199-208
• /
• 2012

전신에 대해 방사선에 민감한 주요장기가 미리 정의된 인체 전산팬텀(compuational human phantom)은 의료분야에서 방사선 치료에 의한 이차암 위험도 평가 및 진단방사선에 의한 유효선량 평가 등에 유용하게 활용될 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 한국인 여성사체에 대한 고해상도 연속절단면 컬러해부영상을 이용하여 장기 및 조직을 전신에 걸쳐 약 2 mm 간격으로 정밀하게 분할하였고, 이를 이용하여 몬테칼로 전산모사에 사용될 수 있는 VHK-Woman 복셀팬텀을 개발하였다. VKH-Woman 복셀팬텀은 키 160 cm, 몸무게 52.72 kg으로 한국인 여성의 표준체형에 가까우며, 유효선량을 계산할 수 있도록 ICRP 103에 제시된 27개 장기 및 기타 관심장기 12개를 포함한다. VKH-Woman의 복셀 해상도는 $1.976{\times}1.976{\times}2.0619mm^3$이며 복셀행렬의 크기는 $261{\times}109{\times}825$이고, 몬테칼로 코드에 입력하여 사용될 수 있도록 이진파일과 ASCII 파일 형식으로 데이터화되었다.

• 대한전자공학회논문지SD
• /
• 제46권1호
• /
• pp.59-67
• /
• 2009

본 논문에서 생체신호의 적응잡음을 제거하기 위해 개선된 비적적응필터(IMADF) 알고리즘을 제안한다. IMADF 구조는 DPCM과 Sign 알고리즘을 사용한 MADF에 1차 예측 필터를 사용한다. 그때 생체신호를 시험하기 위해서 MCG(심자도)에 기반한 심장팬텀 모델을 사용하고 신호를 분석한다. 심장팬텀의 기능들은 다극점 전류원으로부터 만들어진다. 이것은 인간의 심장과 똑같은 기능을 수행하는 역할을 한다 실험결과 IMADF 알고리즘은 곱셈동작이 없고 덧셈동작만 MADF 알고리즘보다 2개 더 늘어났으나, 훨씬 안전한 수렴특성을 나타냈고, 계산상을 복잡성도 줄이는 결과를 얻었다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제47권4호
• /
• pp.472-478
• /
• 2015

The patient dose incurred from diagnostic procedures during advanced radiotherapy has become an important issue. Many researchers in medical physics are using computational simulations to calculate complex parameters in experiments. However, extended computation times make it difficult for personal computers to run the conventional Monte Carlo method to simulate radiological images with high-flux photons such as images produced by computed tomography (CT). To minimize the computation time without degrading imaging quality, we applied a deterministic adaptation to the Monte Carlo calculation and verified its effectiveness by simulating CT image reconstruction for an image evaluation phantom (Catphan; Phantom Laboratory, New York NY, USA) and a human-like voxel phantom (KTMAN-2) (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA). For the deterministic adaptation, the relationship between iteration numbers and the simulations was estimated and the option to simulate scattered radiation was evaluated. The processing times of simulations using the adaptive method were at least 500 times faster than those using a conventional statistical process. In addition, compared with the conventional statistical method, the adaptive method provided images that were more similar to the experimental images, which proved that the adaptive method was highly effective for a simulation that requires a large number of iterations-assuming no radiation scattering in the vicinity of detectors minimized artifacts in the reconstructed image.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권7호
• /
• pp.2599-2605
• /
• 2022

The Korea Retrospective Dosimetry network (KREDOS) performed an inter-laboratory comparison to confirm the harmonization and reliability of the results of retrospective dosimetry using mobile phone. The mobile phones were exposed to ¹⁹²Ir while attached to the human phantoms in the field experiment, and the exposure doses read by each laboratory were compared. This paper describes the reference dosimetry performed to present the reference values for inter-comparison and to obtain additional information about the dose distribution. Reference dosimetry included both measurement using LiF:Mg,Cu,Si and calculation via MCNP simulation to allow a comparison of doses obtained with the two different methodologies. When irradiating the phones, LiF elements were attached to the phones and phantoms and irradiated at the same time. The comparison results for the front of the phantoms were in good agreement, with an average relative difference of about 10%, while an average of about 16% relative difference occurred for the back and side of the phantom. The differences were attributed to the different characteristics of the physical and simulated phantoms, such as anatomical structure and constituent materials. Nevertheless, there was about 4% of under-estimation compared to measurements in the overall linear fitting, indicating the calculations were well matched to the measurements.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• 제23권1호
• /
• pp.38-45
• /
• 2019

Purpose: To demonstrate the high-resolution numerical simulation of the respiration-induced dynamic $B_0$ shift in the head using generalized susceptibility voxel convolution (gSVC). Materials and Methods: Previous dynamic $B_0$ simulation research has been limited to low-resolution numerical models due to the large computational demands of conventional Fourier-based $B_0$ calculation methods. Here, we show that a recently-proposed gSVC method can simulate dynamic $B_0$ maps from a realistic breathing human body model with high spatiotemporal resolution in a time-efficient manner. For a human body model, we used the Extended Cardiac And Torso (XCAT) phantom originally developed for computed tomography. The spatial resolution (voxel size) was kept isotropic and varied from 1 to 10 mm. We calculated $B_0$ maps in the brain of the model at 10 equally spaced points in a respiration cycle and analyzed the spatial gradients of each of them. The results were compared with experimental measurements in the literature. Results: The simulation predicted a maximum temporal variation of the $B_0$ shift in the brain of about 7 Hz at 7T. The magnitudes of the respiration-induced $B_0$ gradient in the x (right/left), y (anterior/posterior), and z (head/feet) directions determined by volumetric linear fitting, were < 0.01 Hz/cm, 0.18 Hz/cm, and 0.26 Hz/cm, respectively. These compared favorably with previous reports. We found that simulation voxel sizes greater than 5 mm can produce unreliable results. Conclusion: We have presented an efficient simulation framework for respiration-induced $B_0$ variation in the head. The method can be used to predict $B_0$ shifts with high spatiotemporal resolution under different breathing conditions and aid in the design of dynamic $B_0$ compensation strategies.