Radiotherapy Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Radiotherapy, including details on cancer treatment, side effects. | ||||||||
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Effective dose equivalent for point gamma sources located 10 cm near the body.Xu XG, Bushart S, Anderson R Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA. xug2@rpi.edu The key component in the so-called EPRI effective dose equivalent (EDE) methodology is an algorithm that utilizes two dosimeters (instead of multiple dosimeters) to predict the EDE for external photon exposures. The exposure scenarios that were previously studied in deriving the algorithm include parallel photon beams and point sources 33 cm from the body surface. The motivation for this study was the need to investigate source locations within 33 cm from the body so the method is more widely applicable. The ORNL stylized mathematical human phantoms and the MCNP code were used to calculate organ doses in this study. This paper presents the EDE data for point gamma sources at 0.3, 1.0, and 1.5 MeV, respectively, which are located at 10 cm from the surface of the body. The results and analyses show that the locations ranging from the overhead to the foot have resulted in conservative ratios except for two general regions near the front upper thigh and directly overhead. If all locations considered in this study were averaged for each photon energy, the overall ratio is on the conservative side. These data suggest that the EPRI EDE methodology is still valid for sources located 10 cm from the body, although the chance for resulting in a non-conservative estimate of the EDE has increased in comparison with the sources located at 30 cm from the body. Finally, this paper provides recommendations on how to apply the EPRI EDE methodology. Published 11 July 2006 in Health Phys, 91(2): 108-18.
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