Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Radioiodine internal dose coefficients specific for Koreans

  • Tae-Eun Kwon (Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health) ;
  • Yoonsun Chung (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Choonsik Lee (Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health)
  • Received : 2023.11.21
  • Accepted : 2024.02.17
  • Published : 2024.07.25
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Abstract

This study developed internal dose coefficients for radioiodine, tailored to the Korean population, by incorporating the Korean biokinetic model along with the Korean S values. The observed differences in dose coefficients for Koreans compared to the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) reference values noticeably varied depending on physical half-lives of iodine isotopes. For longer-lived isotopes such as I-125 and I-129, significant differences in thyroid dose coefficients were observed, with ratios (Korean/ICRP) from 0.30 to 0.55, indicating that actual doses for Koreans can be considerably lower than those evaluated based on the ICRP data. However, for short-lived iodine isotopes, such as I-131, the thyroid dose coefficients were comparable to the ICRP reference values (ratio = 0.95-0.98). These comparable dose coefficients resulted from the lower thyroidal iodine uptake in the Korean model being almost entirely offset by the higher thyroid self-absorption S values in the Korean phantoms. Additionally, this study delves into the substantial differences in absorbed dose coefficients for non-thyroidal regions and effective dose coefficients, which arose not only from physiological/anatomical variability but also technical differences in phantom design. The use of Korean-specific dose coefficients is advisable particularly in scenarios predicting elevated doses, yielding a more precise and clinically relevant dose assessment.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by the intramural research program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.

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