Title: A computational tool for evaluating the exposure risk in nuclear medicine treatments

Authors: Mauro Valente, Francisco Malano, German Tirao

Addresses: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET), Av. Rivadavia 1917 (C1033AAJ), Ciudad Autanoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Facultad de Matematica, Astronomia y Fisica, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Medina Allende y Haya de la Torre, Ciudad Universitaria (5000) Cordoba, Argentina. ' Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET), Av. Rivadavia 1917 (C1033AAJ), Ciudad Autanoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Facultad de Matematica, Astronomia y Fisica, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Medina Allende y Haya de la Torre, Ciudad Universitaria (5000) Cordoba, Argentina. ' Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET), Av. Rivadavia 1917 (C1033AAJ), Ciudad Autanoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Facultad de Matematica, Astronomia y Fisica, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Medina Allende y Haya de la Torre, Ciudad Universitaria (5000) Cordoba, Argentina

Abstract: A computational tool was developed with the aim of evaluating radiation exposure levels corresponding to patients and other exposed people, such as medical staff or chaperones, during typical nuclear medicine procedures. The calculation system is based on Monte Carlo subroutines adapted from the code PENELOPE and devoted to perform energy deposition according to the user-defined set-up. The computation tool offers a comfortable and user-friendly graphic interface for results processing and visualisation. Relevant procedure features, such as treatment room and facility, spatial distribution, source and target phantom as well as radioisotope type, can be easily introduced to the calculation code; this emphasises the versatility and potential of the computational tool. The application of the developed system to simple situations in nuclear medicine showed the reliability and feasibility of the proposed method. The obtained exposure risk maps proved to be useful to establish safe zones there where expositions do not exceed radioprotection tolerances.

Keywords: Monte Carlo simulation; radioprotection; nuclear medicine; exposure risks; low radiation; radiation exposure levels; computational tools; exposure risk maps; ionising radiation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLR.2010.034920

International Journal of Low Radiation, 2010 Vol.7 No.4, pp.333 - 346

Published online: 30 Aug 2010 *

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