• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.601-607
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• 2022

In recent years, monitoring of spent nuclear fuel inside dry cask storage has become an important area of national security. Muon tomography is a useful method for monitoring spent nuclear fuel because it uses high energy muons that penetrate deep into the target material and provides a 3-D structure of the inner materials. We designed a muon tomography system consisting of four 2-D position sensitive detector and characterized and optimized the system parameters. Each detector, measuring 200 × 200 cm², consists of a plastic scintillator, wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers and, SiPMs. The reconstructed image is obtained by extracting the intersection of the incoming and outgoing muon tracks using a Point-of-Closest-Approach (PoCA) algorithm. The Geant4 simulation was used to evaluate the performance of the muon tomography system and to optimize the design parameters including the pixel size of the muon detector, the field of view (FOV), and the distance between detectors. Based on the optimized design parameters, the spent fuel assemblies were modeled and the line profile was analyzed to conduct a feasibility study. Line profile analysis confirmed that muon tomography system can monitor nuclear spent fuel in dry storage container.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.771-779
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• 2021

It is necessary to overlap several peaks to form spread out Bragg peak (SOBP) in order to cover the tumor volume because a mono-energetic proton beam forms a narrow Bragg peak. The tumor density has been considered as a brain tissue and then the absorbed dose of the tumor is calculated using Monte Carlo simulations. However, densities of tumors were not a constant. In this study, the SOBP of proton beams was calculated according to changing density of tumors by using Geant4. Tumors were selected as 10 mm and 20 mm width which were the treatment range in the brain phantom. The energies and relative weights of the proton beams were calculated using mathematical formula to form the SOBP suitable for the location and size of the tumor. As the density of the tumor was increased, the 95% modulation range and the practical range were decreased, and average absorbed dose in the 95% modulation range was increased. The change of the tumor density affects the dose distribution of the proton beams, which results in short SOBP within the tumor volume. The consideration of the tumor density affects the determination of the range, so that the margin of the treatment volume can be minimized, and the advantages of proton therapy can be maximized.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.303-308
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• 2012

The Geant4 based Monte Carlo code for the application of stereotactic radiosurgery was developed. The probability density function and cumulative density function to determine the incident photon energy were calculated from pre-calculated energy spectrum for the linac by multiplying the weighting factors corresponding to the energy bins. The messenger class to transfer the various MLC fields generated by the planning system was used. The rotation matrix of rotateX and rotateY were used for simulating gantry and table rotation respectively. We construct accelerator world and phantom world in the main world coordinate to rotate accelerator and phantom world independently. We used dicomHandler class object to convert from the dicom binary file to the text file which contains the matrix number, pixel size, pixel's HU, bit size, padding value and high bits order. We reconstruct this class object to work fine. We also reconstruct the PrimaryGeneratorAction class to speed up the calculation time. because of the huge calculation time we discard search process of the ThitsMap and used direct access method from the first to the last element to produce the result files.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4019-4025
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• 2023

Recently, a new monkey computational phantom, called Visible Monkey, was developed for non-ionizing radiation studies in animal research. In this study, we extended its applications to ionizing radiation studies by implementing the voxel model of the Visible Monkey into three general-purpose Monte Carlo (MC) codes: MCNP6, PHITS, and Geant4. The implementation work for MCNP and PHITS was conducted using the LATTICE, UNIVERSE, and FILL cards. The G4VNestedParameterisation class was used for Geant4. Then, organ dose coefficients (DCs) for idealized photon beams in the antero-posterior direction were calculated using the three codes and compared, showing excellent agreement (differences <3%). Additionally, organ DCs in other directions (postero-anterior, left-lateral, and right-lateral) were calculated and compared with those of the newborn and 1-year-old reference phantoms. Significant differences were observed (e.g., the stomach DC of the monkey was 5-fold greater than that of the 1-year-old phantom at 0.03 MeV) while the differences tended to decrease with increasing energy (mostly <20% at 10 MeV). The results of this study allows conducting MC simulations using the Visible Monkey to estimate organ-level doses, which should be valuable to support/improve monkey experiments involving ionizing radiation exposures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.503-510
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• 2020

Concrete is one of the most widely used materials as the shielding structures of a nuclear facilities. It is also the most generated radioactive waste in quantity while dismantling facilities. Since the concrete captures neutrons and generates various radionuclides, radiation measurement and analysis of the sample was fulfilled prior to dismantle facilities. An HPGe detector is used in general for the radiation measurement, and effective correction factors such as geometrical correction factor, self-absorption correction, and absolute detector efficiency have to be applied to the measured data to decide exact radioactivity of the sample. Correction factors are obtained by measuring data using a standard source with the same geometry and chemical states as the sample under the same measurement conditions. However, it is very difficult to prepare standard concrete sources because concrete is limited in pretreatment due to various constituent materials and high density. In addition, the concrete sample obtained by core drill is a volumetric source, which requires geometric correction for sample diameter and self absorption correction for sample density. Therefore in recent years, many researchers are working on the calculation of effective correction factors using Monte carlo simulation instead of measuring them using a standard source. In this study we calculated, using Geant4, one of the Monte carlo codes, the correction factors for the various diameter and density of the concrete core sample at the gamma ray energy emitted from the nuclides ¹⁵²Eu and ⁶⁰Co, which are the most generated in radioactive concrete.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.511-515
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• 2020

In this study, we evaluated image quality for new Gadolinium Aluminum Gallium Garnet (GAGG) scintillation material based on the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) simulation tool. The gamma camera detectors with GAGG and NaI scintillation were designed. In particular, we modeled modified body phantom by National Electrical Manufacturers Association International Electrotechnical Commission to evaluate the simulated images. To analysis the image performance, the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and coefficient of variation (COV) were used by drawn the region of interests, respectively. Based on the CNR and COV results, the CNR value for GAGG material is higher approximately 17 % than NaI material. In addition, the COV value for GAGG material is lower approximately 17 % than NaI material. In conclusion, we confirmed the performnace of GAGG based gamma camera is useful to improve the image quality for the nuclear medicine instrumentation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.773-778
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• 2019

Images using X-rays are essential to diagnosis, but noise is inevitable in the image. To compensate for this, a total variation (TV) algorithm was presented to reduce the patient's exposure dose while increasing the quality of the images. The purpose of this study is to verify the effect on the image quality in radiographic imaging according to the thickness of the additional filtration plate through simulation, and to evaluate the usefulness of the TV algorithm. By using the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emissions (GATE) simulation image, the actual size, shape and material of the Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) phantom were identical, the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and coefficient of variation (COV) were compared. The results showed that the CNR value was the highest and the COV the lowest when applying the TV algorithm. In addition, we can acquire superior CNR and COV results with 0 mm Al in all algorithm cases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1754-1761
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• 2024

In hadrontherapy, secondary fragments are generated by nuclear interactions of the incident heavy ion beam with the atomic nuclei of the target. It is important to determine the yield of production and the dose contribution of these secondary fragments in order to determine the radiobiological effectiveness more accurately. This work aims to fully identify the secondary fragments generated by nuclear interactions of proton and helium (⁴He) ion beams in a High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) target and to investigate the dose contributions by secondary fragments. Incident protons with energies of 55.90 MeV and 105.20 MeV and helium ions with energies of 52.55 MeV/u and 103.50 MeV/u in the HDPE phantom have been investigated by the means of Geant4 Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Simulated results were validated using NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) Bragg curves experimental data. The results showed that the dose contribution of secondary fragments deriving from helium ion beams is three times higher than in the case of proton beams. This is due to a higher production of nuclear fragments in the case of helium ion beams. This work contributes to a better understanding of secondary fragments generated by protons and helium ions in the HDPE target.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2011

In this study we modeled the varian 2100C/D linear accelerator head and multi-leaf collimator by simulation with the GEANT4 Monte Carlo toolkit. Then central axis percentage depth dose profiles and lateral dose profiles within homogeneous water phantom($50{\times}50{\times}50\;cm^3$) were evaluated with 6 MV photon beam. The simulations were performed in two stages. In the first stage, photon energy spectrum at the target were computed were computed. Then spectra data was directly irradiated in the water phantom using sampling techniques. The simulation data were compared with experimental data to evaluate the accuracy of the model. Results showed that two data were matched within 2% error boundary. The proposed method will be applied for simulation of dose calculation and dose distribution study.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.701-708
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• 2022

The mass attenuation coefficients (μ_m) of polyethylene glycol (PEG) of different molecular weights (1000-200,000) were measured using single-beam photon transmission. The X-ray fluorescent (XRF) photons from Zinc (Zn), Zirconium (Zr), Molybdenum (Mo), Silver (Ag) and Cadmium (Cd) targets were used to determine the attenuation of gamma radiation of energy range between 8.67 and 23.19 keV in PEG samples. The results were compared to theoretical values using XCOM and Monte Carlo simulation using Geant4 toolkit which was developed to validate the experiment at those certain energies. The mass attenuation coefficients were then used to compute the effective atomic numbers, electron density and half value layers for the studied samples. The outcomes showed good agreement between experimental and simulated results with those calculated theoretically by XCOM within 5% deviation. The PEG 1000 sample showed slightly higher μ_m value compared with the other samples. The dependence of the photon energy and PEG composition on the values of μ_m and HVL were investigated and discussed. In addition, the values of Z_eff and N_eff for all PEG samples behaved similarly in the given photon energy range, and they decreased as the photon energy increased.