Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Determination of counting efficiency considering the biodistribution of 131I activity in the whole-body counting measurement

  • MinSeok Park (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Jaeryong Yoo (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Minho Kim (Department of RI Application, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Won Il Jang (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences) ;
  • Sunhoo Park (National Radiation Emergency Center, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences)
  • Received : 2022.04.28
  • Accepted : 2022.09.12
  • Published : 2023.01.25
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Abstract

Whole-body counters are widely used to assess internal contamination after a nuclear accident. However, it is difficult to determine radioiodine activity due to limitations in conventional calibration phantoms. Inhaled or ingested radioiodine is heterogeneously distributed in the human body, necessitating time-dependent biodistribution for the assessment of the internal contamination caused by the radioiodine intake. This study aims at calculating counting efficiencies considering the biodistribution of 131I in whole-body counting measurement. Monte Carlo simulations with computational human phantoms were performed to calculate the whole-body counting efficiency for a realistic radioiodine distribution after its intake. The biodistributions of 131I for different age groups were computed based on biokinetic models and applied to age- and gender-specific computational phantoms to estimate counting efficiency. After calculating the whole-body counting efficiencies, the efficiency correction factors were derived as the ratio of the counting efficiencies obtained by considering a heterogeneous biodistribution of 131I over time to those obtained using the BOMAB phantom assuming a homogeneous distribution. Based on the correction factors, the internal contamination caused by 131I can be assessed using whole-body counters. These correction factors can minimize the influence of the biodistribution of 131I in whole-body counting measurement and improve the accuracy of internal dose assessment.

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.50535-2022) and the Nuclear Safety Research Program through the Korea Foundation Of Nuclear Safety (KoFONS) using the financial resource granted by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) of Republic of Korea (No. 2104038). The authors thank Choonsik Lee of the National Cancer Institute for providing valuable data on computational phantoms.

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