• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3417-3422
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• 2023

Recently, as the clinically positive biological effects of ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) radiation beams have been revealed, interest in flash radiation therapy has increased. Generally, FLASH preclinical experiments are performed using UHDR electron beams generated by linear accelerators. Real-time monitoring of UHDR beams is required to deliver the correct dose to a sample. However, it is difficult to use typical transmission-type ionization chambers for primary beam monitoring because there is no suitable electrometer capable of reading high pulsed currents, and collection efficiency is drastically reduced in pulsed radiation beams with ultra-high doses. In this study, a monitoring method using bremsstrahlung photons generated by irradiation devices and a water phantom was proposed. Charges collected in an ionization chamber located at the back of a water phantom were analyzed using the bremsstrahlung tail on electron depth dose curves obtained using radiochromic films. The dose conversion factor for converting a monitored charge into a delivered dose was determined analytically for the Advanced Markus® chamber and compared with experimentally determined values. It is anticipated that the method proposed in this study can be useful for monitoring sample doses in UHDR electron beam irradiation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.666-673
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• 2022

The optimization of a transmission type bremsstrahlung conversion target was carried out with Monte Carlo code FLUKA for intense pulsed electron beams with electron energy of several hundred keV for maximum photon fluence. The photon emission intensity from electrons with energy ranging from 300 keV to 1 MeV on tungsten, tantalum and molybdenum targets was calculated with varied target thicknesses. The research revealed that higher target material element number and electron energy leads to increased photon fluence. For a certain target material, the target thickness with maximum photon emission fluence exhibits a linear relationship with the electron energy. With certain electron energy and target material, the thickness of the target plays a dominant role in increasing the transmission photon intensity, with small target thickness the photon flux is largely restricted by low energy loss of electrons for photon generation while thick targets may impose extra absorption for the generated photons. The spatial distribution of bremsstrahlung photon density was analyzed and the optimal target thicknesses for maximum bremsstrahlung photon fluence were derived versus electron energy on three target materials for a quick determination of optimal target design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.225-230
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• 2006

With the advent of inexpensive computing power over the past two decades, applications of Monte Carlo radiation transport techniques have proliferated dramatically. At Los Alamos, the Monte Carlo codes MCNP5 and MCNPX are used routinely on personal computer platforms for radiation shielding analysis and dosimetry calculations. These codes feature a rich palette of variance reduction (VR) techniques. The motivation of VR is to exchange user efficiency for computational efficiency. It has been said that a few hours of user time often reduces computational time by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, user time can stretch into the many hours as most VR techniques require significant user experience and intervention for proper optimization. It is the purpose of this paper to outline VR strategies, tested in practice, optimized for several common radiation shielding tasks, with the hope of reducing user setup time for similar problems. A strategy is defined in this context to mean a collection of MCNP radiation transport physics options and VR techniques that work synergistically to optimize a particular shielding task. Examples are offered in the areas of source definition, skyshine, streaming, and transmission.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.63-69
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• 1985

High energy electron beams took effect for tumor radio-therapy, however, had a lot of problems in clinical application because of various conversion factors and complication of physical reactions. Therefore, we had experimentally studied the important properties of high energy electron beams from the linear accelerator, LMR-13, installed in Yonsei Cancer Center. The results of experimental studies on the problems in the 8, 10, 12 Mev electron beam therapy were reported as following. 1. On the measurements of the outputs and absorbed does, the ionization type dosimeters that had calibrated by $^{90}Sr$ standard source were suitable as under $3\%$ errors for high energy electrons to measure, but measuring doses in small field sizes and the regions of rapid fall off dose with ionization chambers were difficult. 2. The electron energy were measured precisely with energy spectrometer consisted of magnet analyzer and tele-control detector and the practical electron energy was calculated under $5\%$ errors by maximum range of high energy electron beam in the water. 3. The correcting factors of perturbated dose distributions owing to radiation field, energy and material of the treatment cone were checked and described systematically and variation of dose distributions due to inhomogeneous tissues and sloping skin surfaces were completely compensated. 4. The electron beams, using the scatters; i.e., gold, tin, copper, lead, aluminium foils, were adequately diffused and minimizing the bremsstrahlung X-ray induced by the electron energy, irradiation field size and material of scatterers, respectively. 5. Inproving of the dose distribution from the methods of pendulum, slit, grid and focusing irradiations, the therapeutic capacity with limited electron energy could be extended.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.6-22
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• 1978

High energy electron beams took effect for tumor radio-therapy, however, had a lot of problems in clinical application because of various conversion factors and complication of physical reactions. Therefor, we had experimentally studied the important properties of high energy electron beams from the linear accelerator, LMR-13, installed in Yonsei Cancer Center. The results of experimental studies on the problems in the 8, 10, 12 Mev electron beam therapy were reported as following. 1. On the measurements of the outputs and absorbed doses, the ionization type dosimeters that had calibrated by $^{90}Sr$ standard source were suitable as under 3% errors for high energy electrons to measure, but measuring doses in small field sizes and the regions of rapid fall off dose with ionization chambers were difficult. 2. The electron energy were measured precisely with energy spectrometer consisted of magnet analyzer and tele-control detector and the practical electron energy was calculated under 5% errors by maximum range of high energy electron beam in the water. 3. The correcting factors of perturbated dose distributions owing to radiation field, energy and material of the treatment cone were checked and described systematically and variation of dose distributions due to inhomogeneous tissues and sloping skin surfaces were completely compensated. 4. The electron beams, using the scatterers; ie., gold, tin, copper, lead, aluminium foils, were adequately diffused and minimizing the bremsstrahlung X-ray induced by the electron energy, irradiation field size and material of scatterers, respectively. 5. Inproving of the dose distribution from the methods of pendulum, slit, grid and focusing irradiations, the therapeutic capacity with limited electron energy could be extended.