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Title: Equivalent sphere approximations for skin, eye, and blood-forming organs

Journal Article · · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society
OSTI ID:426388
; ;  [1]
  1. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)

Throughout the manned spaceflight program, protecting astronauts from space radiation has been the subject of intense study. For interplanetary crews, two main sources of radiation hazards are solar particle events (SPEs) and galactic cosmic rays. For nearly three decades, crew doses and related shielding requirements have been assessed using the assumption that body organ exposures are well approximated by exposures at the center of tissue-equivalent spheres. For the skin and for blood-forming organs (BFOs), these spheres have radii of 0 and 5 cm, respectively. Recent studies indicate that significant overestimation of organ doses occurs if these models are used instead of realistic human geometry models. The use of the latter, however, requires much longer computational times. In this work, the authors propose preliminary revisions to these equivalent sphere approximations that yield more realistic dose estimates.

OSTI ID:
426388
Report Number(s):
CONF-961103-; ISSN 0003-018X; TRN: 96:006307-0109
Journal Information:
Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 75; Conference: Winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the European Nuclear Society (ENS), Washington, DC (United States), 10-14 Nov 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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