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Title: Specific absorbed fractions for a revised series of the UF/NCI pediatric reference phantoms: internal electron sources

Journal Article · · Physics in Medicine and Biology
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [7]
  1. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Dept. of Radiology
  2. Medical Univ. of South Carolina, Charleston, SC (United States). Dept. of Radiation Oncology
  3. Baylor Scott & White Health, Dallas, TX (United States)
  4. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States). Dept. of Nuclear Engineering
  5. Francis Marion University, Florence, SC (United States). Dept. of Physics and Engineering; Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Center for Radiation Protection Knowledge
  6. National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD (United States). Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics
  7. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). J Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering

Assessment of radiation absorbed dose to internal organs of the body from the intake of radionuclides, or in the medical setting through the injection of radiopharmaceuticals, is generally performed based upon reference biokinetic models or patient imaging data, respectively. Biokinetic models estimate the time course of activity localized to source organs. The time-integration of these organ activity profiles are then scaled by the radionuclide S-value, which defines the absorbed dose to a target tissue per nuclear transformation in various source tissues. S-values are computed using established nuclear decay information (particle energies and yields), and a parameter termed the specific absorbed fraction (SAF). The SAF is the ratio of the absorbed fraction—fraction of particle energy emitted in the source tissue that is deposited in the target tissue—and the target organ mass. While values of the SAF may be computed using patient-specific or individual-specific anatomic models, they have been more widely available through the use of computational reference phantoms. In this study, we report on an extensive series of photon SAFs computed in a revised series of the University of Florida and the National Cancer Institute pediatric reference phantoms which have been modified to conform to the specifications embodied in the ICRP reference adult phantoms of Publication 110 (e.g. organs modeled, organ ID numbers, blood contribution to elemental compositions). Following phantom anatomical revisions, photon radiation transport simulations were performed using MCNPX v2.7 in each of the ten phantoms of the series—male and female newborn, 1 year old, 5 year old, 10 year old, and 15 year old—for 60 different tissues serving as source and/or target regions. A total of 25 photon energies were considered from 10 keV to 10 MeV along a logarithm energy grid. Detailed analyses were conducted of the relative statistical errors in the Monte Carlo target tissue energy deposition tallies at low photon energies and over all energies for source–target combinations at large intra-organ separation distances. Based on these analyses, various data smoothing algorithms were employed, including multi-point weighted data smoothing, and log–log interpolation at low energies (1 keV and 5 keV) using limiting SAF values based upon target organ mass to bound the interpolation interval. The final dataset is provided in a series of ten electronic supplemental files in MS Excel format. Finally, the results of this study were further used as the basis for assessing the radiative component of internal electron source SAFs as described in our companion paper (Schwarz et al 2021) for this same pediatric phantom series.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-000A22725
OSTI ID:
1787967
Journal Information:
Physics in Medicine and Biology, Vol. 66, Issue 3; ISSN 0031-9155
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (7)

Internal photon and electron dosimetry of the newborn patient—a hybrid computational phantom study journal February 2012
Electron specific absorbed fractions for the adult male and female ICRP/ICRU reference computational phantoms journal June 2012
Revisions to the ornl Series of Adult and Pediatric Computational Phantoms for use with the mird Schema journal January 2006
MIRD Pamphlet No. 21: A Generalized Schema for Radiopharmaceutical Dosimetry--Standardization of Nomenclature journal February 2009
Specific absorbed fractions from the image-based VIP-Man body model and EGS4-VLSI Monte Carlo code: internal electron emitters journal March 2001
Specific absorbed fractions for a revised series of the UF/NCI pediatric reference phantoms: internal photon sources journal January 2021
The UF family of reference hybrid phantoms for computational radiation dosimetry journal December 2009