• Journal of radiological science and technology
• /
• v.46 no.6
• /
• pp.527-533
• /
• 2023

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the clinical risk of spinal radiosurgery by calculating the dose difference due to dose calculation algorithm and multi-leaf collimator positioning error. The images acquired by the CT simulator were recalculated by correcting the multi-leaf collimator position in the dose verification program created using MATLAB and applying stoichiometric calibration and Monte Carlo algorithm. With multi-leaf collimator positioning error, the clinical target volume (CTV) showed a dose difference of up to 13% in the dose delivered to the 95% volume, while the gross tumor volume (GTV) showed a dose difference of 9%. The average dose delivered to the total volume showed dose variation from -8.9% to 9% and -10.1% to 10.2% for GTV and CTV, respectively. The maximum dose delivered to the total volume of the spinal cord showed a dose difference from -14.2% to 19.6%, and the dose delivered to the 0.35 ㎤ volume showed a dose difference from -15.5% to 19.4%. In future research, automating the linkage between treatment planning systems and dose verification programs would be useful for spinal radiosurgery.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.46 no.3
• /
• pp.98-105
• /
• 2021

Background: In recent events of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, computed tomography (CT) scans are being globally used as a complement to the reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests. It will be important to be aware of major organ dose levels, which are more relevant quantity to derive potential long-term adverse effect, for Korean pediatric and adult patients undergoing CT for COVID-19. Materials and Methods: We calculated organ dose conversion coefficients for Korean pediatric and adult CT patients directly from Korean pediatric and adult computational phantoms combined with Monte Carlo radiation transport techniques. We then estimated major organ doses delivered to the Korean child and adult patients undergoing CT for COVID-19 combining the dose conversion coefficients and the international survey data. We also compared our Korean dose conversion coefficients with those from Caucasian reference pediatric and adult phantoms. Results and Discussion: Based on the dose conversion coefficients we established in this study and the international survey data of COVID-19-related CT scans, we found that Korean 7-year-old child and adult males may receive about 4-32 mGy and 3-21 mGy of lung dose, respectively. We learned that the lung dose conversion coefficient for the Korean child phantom was up to 1.5-fold greater than that for the Korean adult phantom. We also found no substantial difference in dose conversion coefficients between Korean and Caucasian phantoms. Conclusion: We estimated radiation dose delivered to the Korean child and adult phantoms undergoing COVID-19-related CT examinations. The dose conversion coefficients derived for different CT scan types can be also used universally for other dosimetry studies concerning Korean CT scans. We also confirmed that the Caucasian-based CT organ dose calculation tools may be used for the Korean population with reasonable accuracy.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.179-183
• /
• 2016

Background: As an important detecting device, TLD is a widely used in the radiation monitoring. It is essential for us to study the property of detecting element. The aim of this study is to calculate the thermo-luminescence efficiency of TL elements. Materials and Methods: A batch of thermo-luminescence elements were irradiated by the filtered X-ray beams of average energies in the range 40-200 kVp, 662 keV $^{137}Cs$ gamma rays and then the amounts of lights were measured by the TL reader. The deposition energies in elements were calculated by theory formula and Monte Carlo simulation. The unit absorbed dose in elements by photons with different energies corresponding to the amounts of lights was calculated, which is called the thermo luminescent efficiency (${\eta}^{(E)}$). Because of the amounts of lights can be calculated by the absorbed dose in elements multiply ${\eta}^{(E)}$, the ${\eta}^{(E)}$ can be calculated by the experimental data (the amounts of lights) divided by absorbed dose. Results and Discussion: The deviation of simulation results compared with theoretical calculation results were less than 5%, so the absorbed dose in elements was calculated by simulation results in here. The change range of ${\eta}^{(E)}$ value, relative to 662 keV $^{137}Cs$ gamma rays, is about 30% in the energy range of 33 keV to 662 keV, is in accordance by the comparison with relevant foreign literatures. Conclusion: The ${\eta}^{(E)}$ values can be used for updating the amounts of lights that are got by the direct ratio assumed relations with deposition energy in TL elements, which can largely reduce the error of calculation results of the amounts of lights. These data can be used for the design of individual dosimeter which used TLD-2000 thermo-luminescence elements, also have a certain reference value for manufacturer to improve the energy-response performance of TL elements by formulation adjustment.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.195-201
• /
• 2002

Several investigators have presented the effects of external magnetic fields on the dose distributions for clinical electron and photon beams. We focus the low energy electron beam with more lateral scatter In this study we calculated the beam profiles for an clinical electron beam of 6 MeV with longitudinal magnetic fields of 0.5 T-3.0 T using a Monte Carlo code. The principle of dose enhancements in the penumbra region is to deflect the laterally scattered electrons from its initial direction by the skewness of the laterally scattered electrons along the direction of magnetic field lines due to Lorentz force under longitudinal magnetic field. To discuss the dose enhancement effect on the penumbra area from the calculated results, we introduced the simple term of penumbra reduction ratio (PRR), which is defined as the percentage difference between the penumbra with and without magnetic field at the same depth. We found that the average PRR are 33%, and 49% over the depths of 1.5 cm, 2.0 cm, and 2.4 cm for the magnetic fields of 2.0 T and 3.0 T respectively. For the case of 0.5 T and 1.0 T the effects of magnetic filed were not observed significantly. In order to obtain the dose enhancement effects by the external magnetic field, we think that its strength should be more than 2 T approximately. We expect that the PRR would be saturated to 50-60% with magnetic fields of 3 T-5 T As a result of these calculations we found that the penumbra widths can be reduced with increased magnetic fields. This Penumbra reduction is explained as a result of electron lateral spread outside the geometrical edges of the beam in a longitudinal magnetic field. This means that the electron therapy benefits from the external magnetic fields.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.39 no.4
• /
• pp.159-167
• /
• 2014

In Korea, July 2012, the law as called 'Act on Safety Control of Radioactive Rays Around Living Environment' was implemented to control the consumer product containing Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM), but, there are no appropriate database and effective dose calculation system. The aim of this study was to develop evaluation technique of the exposure dose with the use of the consumer products containing NORM and to understand the characteristics of the exposed dose according to the radiation type and energy. For the evaluate of exposure dose, the ICRP reference phantom was simulated by the MCNPX code based on Monte Carlo method, and the minimum, medium, maximum energy of alphas, betas, gammas from the representative NORM of Uranium decay series were used as the source term in the simulation. The annual effective doses were calculated by the exposure scenario of the consumer product usage time and position. Short range of the alpha and beta rays are mostly delivered the dose to the skin. On the other hand, the gamma rays mostly delivered the similar dose to all of the organs. The results of the annual effective dose with $1Bq{\cdot}g^{-1}$ radioactive stone-bed and 10% radioactive concentration were employed with the usage time of 7 hours 50 minute per day, the maximum annual effective dose of alphas, betas, gammas were calculated 0.0222, 0.0836, $0.0101mSv{\cdot}y^{-1}$, respectively.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.47 no.4
• /
• 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.

• 대한방사선방어학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2011.11a
• /
• pp.180-181
• /
• 2011

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1997.05b
• /
• pp.566-570
• /
• 1997

The effect of average gamma energy on the external radiation dose has been analyzed. Cloud- and groundshine have been calculated according to the average gamma energy. Monte Carlo integration method was used for the calculation of cloudshine and Romberg quadrature method was adopted for groundshine. The analysis shows that the external gamma exposure is strong]y dependent on the gamma energy and the distribution of radiation sources.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 2003.09a
• /
• pp.56-56
• /
• 2003

For the treatment of superficial tumors like squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, 6 MV photon beam is not appropriate and a spoiler is widely used to increase dose in the buildup region, while preserving the skin sparing effect. However, commercially available treatment planning systems assume a normal unspoiled beam, thereby cannot predict the buildup dose with spoiler accurately. We aimed to implement a Monte Carlo (MC) based planning system to apply it to the radiation treatment of head and neck. Lucite with thickness of 10-mm was used for the beam spoiler with Siemens Primus 6 MV photon beam. BEAM/DOSXYZ MC system was employed to model the linac and the spoiler. To verify the calculation accuracy of MC simulations, the percent depth doses (PDDs) and profiles with and without spoiler were measured using a parallel-plate chamber. For the MC based planning, we adopted a hybrid interface system between Pinnacle (Philips, USA) and BEAM/DOSXYZ to support treatment parameters of Siemens linac and the spoiler. The measurements of PDDs and profiles agreed with the corresponding MC simulations within 2% (lSD), which demonstrate the reliability of our MC simulations. The spoiler generated electrons make a contribution to the absorbed dose up to depth of 2cm, which shows that the dominant source of increased dose from spoiler system is the contaminating electrons created by the spoiler. The whole procedures necessary for MC based treatment planning were performed seamlessly between Pinnacle and BEAM/DOSXYZ system. This ability helps to increase the clinical efficiency of the spoiler technique. In conclusion, we implemented a MC based treatment planning system for a 6 MV photon beam with a spoiler. We demonstrate sophisticated MC technique makes it possible to predict dose distributions around buildup region accurately.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.48-53
• /
• 2013

Monte Carlo method has been known as the most accurate method for calculating absorbed dose in the human body, and an anthropomorphic phantom has been mainly used as a method of simulating internal organs for using such a calculation method. However, various efforts are made to extract data on several internal organs in the human body directly from CT DICOM files in recent Monte Carlo calculation using Geant4 code and to use by converting them into the geometry necessary for simulation. Such a function makes it possible to calculate the internal absorbed dose accurately while duplicating the actual human anatomical structure. Thus, this study calculated the absorbed dose in the human body by using Geant4 associating with DICOM files, and aimed to confirm the usefulness by compare the result with the measured dose using a Gafchromic EBT2 film. This study compared the dose calculated using simulation and the measured dose in beam central axis using the EBT2 film. The results showed that the range of difference was an average of 3.75% except for a build-up region, in which the dose rapidly changed from skin surface to the depth of maximum dose. In addition, this study made it easy to confirm the target absorbed dose by internal organ and organ through the output of the calculated value of dose by CT slice and the dose value of each voxel in each slice. Thus, the method that outputs dose value by slice and voxel through the use of CT DICOM, which is actual image data of human body, instead of the anthropomorphic phantom enables accurate dose calculations of various regions. Therefore, it is considered that it will be useful for dose calculation of radiotherapy planning system in the future. Moreover, it is applicable for currently-used several energy ranges in current use, so it is considered that it will be effectively used in order to check the radiation absorbed dose in the human body.