Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Virtual calibration of whole-body counters to consider the size dependency of counting efficiency using Monte Carlo simulations

  • Park, MinSeok (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Kim, Han Sung (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Yoo, Jaeryong (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Kim, Chan Hyeong (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Jang, Won Il (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Park, Sunhoo (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences)
  • Received : 2021.02.25
  • Accepted : 2021.06.12
  • Published : 2021.12.25
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Abstract

The counting efficiencies obtained using anthropomorphic physical phantoms are generally used in whole-body counting measurements to determine the level of internal contamination in the body. Geometrical discrepancies between phantoms and measured individuals affect the counting efficiency, and thus, considering individual physical characteristics is crucial to improve the accuracy of activity estimates. In the present study, the counting efficiencies of whole-body counting measurements were calculated considering individual physical characteristics by employing Monte Carlo simulation for calibration. The NaI(Tl)-based stand-up and HPGe-based bed type commercial whole-body counters were used for calculating the counting efficiencies. The counting efficiencies were obtained from 19 computational phantoms representing various shapes and sizes of the measured individuals. The discrepancies in the counting efficiencies obtained using the computational and physical phantoms range from 2% to 33%, and the results indicate that the counting efficiency depends on the size of the measured individual. Taking into account the body size, the equations for estimating the counting efficiencies were derived from the relationship between the counting efficiencies and the body-build index of the subject. These equations can aid in minimizing the size dependency of the counting efficiency and provide more accurate measurements of internal contamination in whole-body counting measurements.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by a grant of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences (KIRAMS), funded by Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT), Republic of Korea. (No.50535-2021) The authors would like to express their gratitude to Choonsik Lee at the National Cancer Institute, X. George Xu at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Richard Kramer at the Federal University of Pernambuco, and Kaoru Sato at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency for providing valuable data on computational phantoms.

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