• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.93-99
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• 2001

해부학적으로 단순한 수학적인형팬텀의 한계를 극복하기 위한 voxel 머리팬텀을 제작하고 BNCT(Boron Neutron Capture Therapy) 시행 시 선량분포를 계산하였다. 일반목적 몬테칼로 코드인 MCNP4B의 반복구조 알고리즘을 이용하여 voxel 몬테칼로 계산체계를 수립하였고 두 가지 물질로 구성된 예시적 voxel 팬텀과 기하체조합팬텀의 계산값 비교를 통해 계산체계를 검증하였다. 미국 NLM(National Library of Medicine)에서 제공하는 VHP man 인체단층사진에 대한 분할 및 색인작업을 통해 voxel 머리팬텀을 제작하여 AP 및 PA 방향에서 입사하는 넓고 평행한 광자 및 중성자빔에 대한 선량값을 MIRD 팬텀의 계산값과 비교한 결과 중성자빔 AP 방향조사 시 MIRD 팬텀에서는 볼 수 없는 안구로 인한 중성자 감쇠현상을 확인할 수 있었다. 3차원 정밀계산이 필요한 BNCT 시술시 선량분포계산을 위해 뇌 중앙에 직경 5cm의 구형 뇌종양 체적을 정의하고 뇌와 종양의 붕소 함량을 조정하여 10keV 및 40keV 상부입사 중성자에 의한 장기별 흡수선량을 계산한 결과 종양에 $30{\mu}g/g$, 정상세포에 $3{\mu}g/g$의 붕소를 주입한 경우 붕소함량이 없을 때에 비해 2배 가량 큰 선량을 보였다. 본 연구를 통해 voxel몬테칼로기법을 이용한 선량평가체계를 수립하였고 정밀한 선량계산을 필요로 하는 치료방사선분야 선량계산에 실제 인체에 가까운 voxel팬텀의 응용가능성을 제시하였다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권5호
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• pp.1769-1780
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• 2022

A new method of dose calculation algorithm, called GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo and collapsed cone Convolution (GMCC) was developed to improve the calculation speed of BNCT treatment planning system. The GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo routine in GMCC is used to simulate the neutron transport over whole energy range and the Collapsed Cone Convolution method is to calculate the gamma dose. Other dose components due to alpha particles and protons, are calculated using the calculated neutron flux and reaction data. The mathematical principle and the algorithm architecture are introduced. The accuracy and performance of the GMCC were verified by comparing with the FLUKA results. A water phantom and a head CT voxel model were simulated. The neutron flux and the absorbed dose obtained by the GMCC were consistent well with the FLUKA results. In the case of head CT voxel model, the mean absolute percentage error for the neutron flux and the absorbed dose were 3.98% and 3.91%, respectively. The calculation speed of the absorbed dose by the GMCC was 56 times faster than the FLUKA code. It was verified that the GMCC could be a good candidate tool instead of the Monte Carlo method in the BNCT dose calculations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권7호
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• pp.1505-1512
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• 2017

Because accelerator-based boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) systems are planned for use in hospitals, entry into the medical room should be controlled as hospitals are generally assumed to be public and safe places. In this paper, computational investigation of the medical staff effective dose during BNCT has been performed in different situations using Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP4C) code and two voxel based male phantoms. The results show that the medical staff effective dose is highly dependent on the position of the medical staff. The results also show that the maximum medical staff effective dose in an emergency situation in the presence of a patient is ${\sim}25.5{\mu}Sv/s$.

• 한국의학물리학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국의학물리학회 2002년도 Proceedings
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• pp.116-118
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• 2002

It has been noted that Monte Carlo simulations are the most accurate method to calculate dose distributions in any material and geometry. Monte Carlo transport algorithms determine the absorbed dose by following the path of representative particles as they travel through the medium. Accurate Monte Carlo dose calculations rely on detailed modeling of the radiation source. We modeled the effects of beam modifiers such as collimators, blocks, wedges, etc. of our accelerator, Varian Clinac 600C/D to ensure accurate representation of the radiation source using the EGSnrc based BEAM code. These were used in the EGSnrc based DOSXYZ code for the simulation of particles transport through a voxel based Cartesian coordinate system. Because Monte Carlo methods use particle-by-particle methods to simulate a radiation transport, more particle histories yield the better representation of the actual dose. But the prohibitively long time required to get high resolution and accuracy calculations has prevented the use of Monte Carlo methods in the actual clinical spots. Our ultimate aim is to develop a Monte Carlo dose calculation system designed specifically for radiation therapy planning, which is distinguished from current dose calculation methods. The purpose of this study in the present phase was to get dose calculation results corresponding to measurements within practical time limit. We used parallel processing and some variance reduction techniques, therefore reduced the computational time, preserving a good agreement between calculations of depth dose distributions and measurements within 5% deviations.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제38권4호
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• pp.242-245
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• 2013

원전 방사선작업종사자의 내부선량평가를 위해 일반적으로 사용되고 있는 bed type 전신계측에 몬테카를로 방법을 적용하여 작업자에 대한 외부오염 계측특성을 평가하였다. 한국인 체형을 반영하는 voxel 모의 피폭체를 이용하여 내부오염시 측정 특성을 평가하였다. 외부오염 판별을 위해 BOMAB 모의 피폭체를 이용하여 신체 각 부위별 오염시 나타나는 측정 특성을 평가하였다. 가슴 부위 오염시 누운 자세와 엎드린 자세로 구분하여 외부오염시 계측 특성을 확인하였다. 정량적인 분석을 통해 bed type 전신계측기를 이용한 외부오염 판별이 가능함을 확인하였다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권2호
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• pp.681-688
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• 2022

Dose monitoring in CT patients requires accurate dose estimation but most of the CT dose calculation tools are based on Caucasian computational phantoms. We established a library of organ dose conversion coefficients for Korean adults by using four Korean adult male and two female voxel phantoms combined with Monte Carlo simulation techniques. We calculated organ dose conversion coefficients for head, chest, abdomen and pelvis, and chest-abdomen-pelvis scans, and compared the results with the existing data calculated from Caucasian phantoms. We derived representative organ doses for Korean adults using Korean CT dose surveys combined with the dose conversion coefficients. The organ dose conversion coefficients from the Korean adult phantoms were slightly greater than those of the ICRP reference phantoms: up to 13% for the brain doses in head scans and up to 10% for the dose to the small intestine wall in abdominal scans. We derived Korean representative doses to major organs in head, chest, and AP scans using mean CTDI_vol values extracted from the Korean nationwide surveys conducted in 2008 and 2017. The Korean-specific organ dose conversion coefficients should be useful to readily estimate organ absorbed doses for Korean adult male and female patients undergoing CT scans.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권11호
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• pp.4019-4025
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• 2023

Recently, a new monkey computational phantom, called Visible Monkey, was developed for non-ionizing radiation studies in animal research. In this study, we extended its applications to ionizing radiation studies by implementing the voxel model of the Visible Monkey into three general-purpose Monte Carlo (MC) codes: MCNP6, PHITS, and Geant4. The implementation work for MCNP and PHITS was conducted using the LATTICE, UNIVERSE, and FILL cards. The G4VNestedParameterisation class was used for Geant4. Then, organ dose coefficients (DCs) for idealized photon beams in the antero-posterior direction were calculated using the three codes and compared, showing excellent agreement (differences <3%). Additionally, organ DCs in other directions (postero-anterior, left-lateral, and right-lateral) were calculated and compared with those of the newborn and 1-year-old reference phantoms. Significant differences were observed (e.g., the stomach DC of the monkey was 5-fold greater than that of the 1-year-old phantom at 0.03 MeV) while the differences tended to decrease with increasing energy (mostly <20% at 10 MeV). The results of this study allows conducting MC simulations using the Visible Monkey to estimate organ-level doses, which should be valuable to support/improve monkey experiments involving ionizing radiation exposures.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제45권2호
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• pp.69-75
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• 2020

Background: Dose conversion coefficients (DCCs) have been commonly used to estimate radiation-dose absorption by human organs based on physical measurements of fluence or kerma. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has reported a library of DCCs, but few studies have been conducted on their applicability to non-Caucasian populations. In the present study, we collected a total of 8 Korean pediatric and adult voxel phantoms to calculate the organ DCCs for idealized external photon-irradiation geometries. Materials and Methods: We adopted one pediatric female phantom (ETRI Child), two adult female phantoms (KORWOMAN and HDRK Female), and five adult male phantoms (KORMAN, ETRI Man, KTMAN1, KTMAN2, and HDRK Man). A general-purpose Monte Carlo radiation transport code, MCNPX2.7 (Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport extended version 2.7), was employed to calculate the DCCs for 13 major radiosensitive organs in six irradiation geometries (anteroposterior, posteroanterior, right lateral, left lateral, rotational, and isotropic) and 33 photon energy bins (0.01-20 MeV). Results and Discussion: The DCCs for major radiosensitive organs (e.g., lungs and colon) in anteroposterior geometry agreed reasonably well across the 8 Korean phantoms, whereas those for deep-seated organs (e.g., gonads) varied significantly. The DCCs of the child phantom were greater than those of the adult phantoms. A comparison with the ICRP Publication 116 data showed reasonable agreements with the Korean phantom-based data. The variations in organ DCCs were well explained using the distribution of organ depths from the phantom surface. Conclusion: A library of dose conversion coefficients for major radiosensitive organs in a series of pediatric and adult Korean voxel phantoms was established and compared with the reference data from the ICRP. This comparison showed that our Korean phantom-based data agrees reasonably with the ICRP reference data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권6호
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• pp.2247-2257
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• 2024

To investigate the impact of the recently released pediatric reference voxel phantoms (0-, 1-, 5-, 10-, 15-year-old males and females) of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) on organ dose estimates for radioactive iodine (RAI) treatment in pediatric patients, we calculated and analyzed pediatric-specific iodine131 S values (r_T ← thyroid) for the 30 radiosensitive organs by conducting Monte Carlo simulations using the Geant4. The gender dependency in the S values was frequently seen for the 15-year-old phantoms with higher S values of female than male. In addition, the age dependency in the S values was observed for most target organs; that is, the S values tend to decrease for older ages (e.g., ~120 times for the gonads between the adult and newborn) due mainly to the inter-organ distances generally longer for older ages. Moreover, we observed that the iodine-131 S values tend to be significantly greater by up to ~145.5 times than those of the stylized phantoms that have been widely used for organ dose estimates of pediatric RAI patients. We believe that the pediatric-specific iodine-131 S values (r_T ← thyroid) of the ICRP pediatric reference voxel phantoms should be beneficial to improve the dosimetry of pediatric RAI patients.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제37권1호
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• pp.41-49
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• 2012

한국인 기준남성 체적소형 모의체 HDRK-Man은 서양인과는 구별되는 한국인에 대한 내 외부피폭 관련 방사선방호량을 계산하기 위하여 개발되었다. 하지만 유효선량을 그 정의에 맞게 계산하기 위해서는 반드시 남녀 한쌍의 인체 전산모의체가 필요하다. 이에 본 연구는 HDRK-Man과 한 쌍을 이루는 한국인 기준여성 체적소형 모의체 HDRK-Woman을 개발하였다. HDRK-Woman의 개발을 위하여 한국인 여성사체로부터 획득된 고해상도 연속절단면 컬러해부영상을 사용하여 제작된 체적소형 모의체의 키, 몸무게 및 장기무게를 한국인 기준자료에 맞게 조정하였다. 전반적인 조정 절차는 ICRP의 체적소형 기준모의체 개발 시 사용된 방법에 따라 키 조정, 뼈 무게 조정, 장기무게 조정, 몸무게 조정의 순으로 진행하였다. 특별히 기존에 사용되던 장기무게 조정 방법의 반복된 절차를 간소화하고 단점을 보완하기 위하여 장기무게 조정 프로그램을 자체적으로 개발하여 사용하였다. 최종 완성된 HDRK-Woman의 체적소 해상도는 x, y, z축 방향 순으로 $2.0351{\times}2.0351{\times}2.0747\;mm^3$이며, 체적소 행렬의 크기는 $261{\times}109{\times}825$이다. 또한 유효선량 계산 시 필요한 장기들을 포함한 총 39개의 장기 및 조직이 표현되어 있다. 본 연구는 HDRK-Woman을 MCNPX 몬테칼로 코드에 입력하여 외부에서 입사하는 광자빔에 대한 장기선량을 계산하였으며, HDRK-Man의 장기선량과 합산하여 한국인에 대한 유효선량 환산계수를 계산하고 ICRP 기준남녀 체적소형 모의체의 유효선량과 비교하였다. 고해상도 컬러해부영상을 기반으로 제작된 기준한국인 성인여성 체적소형 모의체 HDRK-Woman은 장기 및 조직이 정밀하게 표현되어 있으며, 일부 조정이 불가능한 장기를 제외한 대부분의 장기 및 조직들이 한국인 기준자료에 정확하게 일치하도록 조정되었다. 따라서 기준한국인 성인남성 체적소형 모의체 HDRK-Man과 함께 한국인에 대한 장기선량 및 유효선량을 정확하게 평가하는데 활용될 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.