• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.216-222
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• 1989

원자력병원에 설치되어 있는 MC-50 싸이클로트론은 중성자 치료와 의학용 동위원소 생산을 위해 가동중에 있다. 본 논문에서는 MC-50의 설계 특징, 기계적 구조, 가동 특성에 대하여 기술하고 있다. 본 싸이클로트론의 최적 가동 조건은 반복적인 운전에 의해 결정되었으며, 내부 빔의 성능은 싸이클로트론 반경의 함수로서 내부 빔의 세기 및 공간 분포 측정을 통해 조사되어졌다. 일상적으로, 인출효율이 61%일 때 40$\mu$A세기의 50 MeV 양성자 빔을 얻었다.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제15권6호
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• pp.283-289
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• 2015

현재 방사선치료는 치료효과를 높이기 위해 고에너지 광자선의 사용이 증가하고 있는 추세이다. 일반적으로 6~8 MeV 이상의 고에너지 광자선을 사용하는 경우에는, 광핵반응에 의한 광중성자가 발생됨으로써 방사선 방호의 측면에서 많은 문제를 야기 시킬 수 있다. 이에 본 연구는 MCNPX를 이용하여 방사선 치료실의 광중성자 선량분포를 분석하였다. 그 결과 10 MV와 12 MV 구간에서 급격한 흡수선량의 증가를 보였다. 이를 통해 10 MV를 시작으로 광중성자 플루언스의 급격한 증가가 흡수선량으로 연계됨을 알 수 있었다. 또한 산출된 흡수선량을 바탕으로 등가선량을 환산한 결과는 ICRP 103 권고안의 경우, 낮은 에너지 범위에서 인체의 흡수선량에 대한 2차 광자의 기여를 반영함으로써 ICRP 60 권고안에 비해 낮은 등가선량을 나타냈다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권8호
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• pp.2767-2773
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• 2021

We used the GEANT4 Monte Carlo MC Toolkit to simulate carbon ion beams incident on water, tissue, and bone, taking into account nuclear fragmentation reactions. Upon increasing the energy of the primary beam, the position of the Bragg-Peak transfers to a location deeper inside the phantom. For different materials, the peak is located at a shallower depth along the beam direction and becomes sharper with increasing electron density NZ. Subsequently, the generated depth dose of the Bragg curve is then benchmarked with experimental data from GSI in Germany. The results exhibit a reasonable correlation with GSI experimental data with an accuracy of between 0.02 and 0.08 cm, thus establishing the basis to adopt MC in heavy-ion treatment planning. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov K-S test further ascertained from a statistical point of view that the simulation data matched the experimentally measured data very well. The two-dimensional isodose contours at the entrance were compared to those around the peak position and in the tail region beyond the peak, showing that bone produces more dose, in comparison to both water and tissue, due to secondary doses. In the water, the results show that the maximum energy deposited per fragment is mainly attributed to secondary carbon ions, followed by secondary boron and beryllium. Furthermore, the number of protons produced is the highest, thus making the maximum contribution to the total dose deposition in the tail region. Finally, the associated spectra of neutrons and photons were analyzed. The mean neutron energy value was found to be 16.29 MeV, and 1.03 MeV for the secondary gamma. However, the neutron dose was found to be negligible as compared to the total dose due to their longer range.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• 제30권1호
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• pp.27-35
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• 2012

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of common three photon energies (6-MV, 10-MV, and 15-MV) on intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans to treat prostate cancer patients. Materials and Methods: Twenty patients with prostate cancer treated locally to 81.0 Gy were retrospectively studied. 6-MV, 10-MV, and 15-MV IMRT plans for each patient were generated using suitable planning objectives, dose constraints, and 8-field setting. The plans were analyzed in terms of dose-volume histogram for the target coverage, dose conformity, organs at risk (OAR) sparing, and normal tissue integral dose. Results: Regardless of the energies chosen at the plans, the target coverage, conformity, and homogeneity of the plans were similar. However, there was a significant dose increase in rectal wall and femoral heads for 6-MV compared to those for 10-MV and 15-MV. The $V_{20Gy}$ of rectal wall with 6-MV, 10-MV, and 15-MV were 95.6%, 88.4%, and 89.4% while the mean dose to femoral heads were 31.7, 25.9, and 26.3 Gy, respectively. Integral doses to the normal tissues in higher energy (10-MV and 15-MV) plans were reduced by about 7%. Overall, integral doses in mid and low dose regions in 6-MV plans were increased by up to 13%. Conclusion: In this study, 10-MV prostate IMRT plans showed better OAR sparing and less integral doses than the 6-MV. The biological and clinical significance of this finding remains to be determined afterward, considering neutron dose contribution.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제41권4호
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• pp.328-332
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• 2016

Background: Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a new radiation therapy. In BNCT, there exists some very critical problems that should be solved. One of the severest problems is that the treatment effect cannot be known during BNCT in real time. We are now developing a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) system (BNCT-SPECT), with a cadmium telluride (CdTe) semiconductor detector. BNCT-SPECT can obtain the BNCT treatment effect by measuring 478 keV gamma-rays emitted from the excited state of $^7Li$ nucleus created by $^{10}B(n,{\alpha})$ $^7Li$ reaction. In the previous studies, we investigated the feasibility of the BNCT-SPECT system. As a result, the S/N ratio did not meet the criterion of S/N > 1 because deterioration of the S/N ratio occurred caused by the influence of Compton scattering especially due to capture gamma-rays of hydrogen. Materials and Methods: We thus produced an arrayed detector with two CdTe crystals to test cross talk phenomenon and to examine an anti-coincidence detection possibility. For more precise analysis for the anti-coincidence detection, we designed and made a collimator having a similar performance to the real BNCT-SPECT. Results and Discussion: We carried out experiments with the collimator to examine the effect of cross talk of scattering gamma-rays between CdTe elements more practically. As a result of measurement the coincidence events were successfully extracted. Conclusion: We are now planning to carry out evaluation of coincidence rate from the measurement and comparison of it with the numerical calculations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권6호
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• pp.2335-2347
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• 2023

As medical facilities are usually built at urban areas, special concrete aggregates and evaluation methods are needed to optimize the design of concrete walls by balancing density, thickness, material composition, cost, and other factors. Carbon treatment rooms require a high radiation shielding requirement, as the neutron yield from carbon therapy is much higher than the neutron yield of protons. In this case study, the maximum carbon energy is 430 MeV/u and the maximum current is 0.27 nA from a hybrid particle therapy system. Hospital or facility construction should consider this requirement to design a special heavy concrete. In this work, magnetite is adopted as the major aggregate. Density is determined mainly by the major aggregate content of magnetite, and a heavy concrete test block was constructed for structural tests. The compressive strength is 35.7 MPa. The density ranges from 3.65 g/cm³ to 4.14 g/cm³, and the iron mass content ranges from 53.78% to 60.38% from the 12 cored sample measurements. It was found that there is a linear relationship between density and iron content, and mixing impurities should be the major reason leading to the nonuniform element and density distribution. The effect of this nonuniformity on radiation shielding properties for a carbon treatment room is investigated by three groups of Monte Carlo simulations. Higher density dominates to reduce shielding thickness. However, a higher content of high-Z elements will weaken the shielding strength, especially at a lower dose rate threshold and vice versa. The weakened side effect of a high iron content on the shielding property is obvious at 2.5 µSv=h. Therefore, we should not blindly pursue high Z content in engineering. If the thickness is constrained to 2 m, then the density can be reduced to 3.3 g/cm³, which will save cost by reducing the magnetite composition with 50.44% iron content. If a higher density of 3.9 g/cm³ with 57.65% iron content is selected for construction, then the thickness of the wall can be reduced to 174.2 cm, which will save space for equipment installation.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제34권4호
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• pp.1051-1054
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• 2013

Closo-carborane has been considered as an efficient boron-carrier for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) and an attractive surrogate of lipophilic phenyl or cyclohexyl ring in drug design. Despite a great number of carborane-containing ligands have been synthesized and evaluated, molecular modeling studies of carborane ligands with macromolecules have been rarely reported. We herein describe a facile docking and scoring-function strategy of 16 carborane ligands with an estrogen receptor by using the commercial Gaussian, Chem3D Pro and Discovery Studio (DS) computational programs. Docked poses of the carborane ligands in silico exhibited similar binding modes to that of the crystal ligand in the active site of estrogen receptor. Score analysis of the best docked pose for each ligand indicated that the Ligscore1 and the Dockscore have a moderate correlation with in vitro biological activity. This is the first report on the scoring-correlation studies of carborane ligands with macromolecules. The integrated Gaussian-DS approach has a potential application for virtual screening, De novo design, and optimization of carborane ligands in medicinal chemistry.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권11호
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• pp.4209-4214
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• 2022

Precise modelling of the interaction of ions with materials is important for many applications including material characterization, ion implantation in devices, thermonuclear fusion, hadron therapy, secondary particle production (e.g. neutron), etc. In this study, a new approach using the Geant4 toolkit in combination with the Bayesian regularization (BR) learning algorithm of the feed-forward neural network (FFNN) is developed to estimate the range of ions in materials accurately and quickly. The different incident ions at different energies are interacted with the target materials. The Geant4 is utilized to model the interactions and to calculate the range of the ions. Afterward, the appropriate architecture of the FFNN-BR with the relevant input features is utilized to learn the modelled ranges and to estimate the new ranges for the new cases. The notable achievements of the proposed approach are: 1- The range of ions in different materials is given as quickly as possible and the time required for estimating the ranges can be neglected (i.e. less than 0.01 s by a typical personal computer). 2- The proposed approach can generalize its ability for estimating the new untrained cases. 3- There is no need for a pre-made lookup table for the estimation of the range values.

• 대한방사선치료학회지
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• 제24권2호
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• pp.107-114
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• 2012

목 적: 기존의 광자선을 이용한 선형가속기와는 달리, 양성자 치료의 경우 물질과의 상호작용으로 발생되는 중성자를 비롯한 여러 핵종 등으로 인해 다량의 이차방사선이 생성되기 때문에 방사선 작업 종사자의 피폭은 더욱 주의 깊은 관심이 필요하다. 이에 방사선 측정 시에 널리 이용되고 있는 열형광선량계를 이용하여 방사선 작업 종사자의 피폭정도를 평가하고 이를 토대로 양성자 치료 시 방사선 피폭선량에 관한 기초 자료를 제시하고자 한다. 대상 및 방법: 본원의 양성자 치료실에서 근무한 방사선 작업 종사자를 대상으로 열형광선량계 뱃지를 이용해 피폭현황을 측정한 데이터를 비교했다. 양성자의 빔 라인 주변에서 발생하는 이차방사선의 신체부위별 피폭선량 분포를 알아보고자 신체부위(외안각, 목, 유두점, 배꼽, 등, 손목)에 가로, 세로가 각각 3 mm인 정사각형 모양의 열형광선량계를 부착하여 일일 8시간의 근무시간동안 유지하도록 하였고 총 80시간 측정하여 평균 데이터를 얻었다. 그리고 치료실 내 공간적인 방사선량의 분포를 보기 위하여 빔 사출구, PPS (Patient Positioning System), Pendant, 차폐체보관장, DIPS (Digital Image Positioning System) Console, 출입통로에 각각 열형광선랑계를 부착하고 일일 근무시간 동안의 평균 방사선량을 측정하였다. 결 과: 방사선 작업 종사자의 열형광선량계 뱃지로 측정된 피폭량을 조사한 결과 분기별 평균 0.174 mSv, 연평균 0.543 mSv로 나타났고 신체부위별로 측정한 결과에서 가장 많은 피폭량을 보인 곳은 목이였으며 가장 적은 피폭량을 보인 곳은 등(양견갑골 상각을 이은 선의 중간 지점)으로 나타났다. 작업 동선에 따른 공간적 방사선량을 알아본 결과에서는 빔 사출구 근처에서 상대적으로 높게 나타났고 거리가 멀어짐에 따라 줄어들었다. 결 론: 적은 양의 피폭일지라도 동일 장소에서 장기 근무하게 되면 피폭 누적량은 증가할 수밖에 없고 특정 부위의 누적량은 건강상의 위험을 가져다 줄 수도 있다. 그러므로 국제 방사선 방어 위원회가 권고하는 ALARA의 원칙에 따라 가능한 합리적으로 감소시킬 수 있도록 스스로 개인별 피폭관리에 철저를 기하고 피폭을 최소화시키는데 최선의 노력을 다해야 할 것이다.

• 한국의학물리학회지:의학물리
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• 제26권4호
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• pp.250-257
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• 2015

양성자 치료를 위해서는 Snout이 부착된 받침대(gantry)를 사용하는데 빔의 형태를 만들기 위해 환자 종양의 크기와 거리에 맞게 황동 차폐체(aperture)가 많이 사용된다. 또한 빔의 거리를 보정하기 위해 PMMA를 이용한 거리 보상체도 사용된다. 이렇게 황동으로 만들어진 차폐체의 경우 가공하는데 많은 시간이 소요되며 비용 발생이 높다. 또한 치료 사용되었던 차폐체의 방사선 노출에 따라 재사용이 어렵다. 이러한 단점을 보안하기 위해 황동 차폐체 대신 X-선 치료에서 사용되는 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터 시스템을 도입하였다. 수동형 다업 콜리메이터는 여러 개의 황동판을 조립하여 차폐체를 제작하는 방식이다. 본 연구는 제작된 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터의 방사화 실험 및 필름을 이용해 선량측정을 진행하였다. 다엽 콜리메이터를 투과한 2차 발생 선량 1% 이하였으며, 여러 번의 230 MeV의 빔에서도 방사화가 2시간 이내에서 감소하였다. 이렇게 개발된 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터를 임상에 적용하여 일반 차폐체와 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터를 감마지표 분석을 했을 시 99.74%의 높은 일치도가 측정되었다. 또한, 일반 황동 차폐체에 비해 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터를 제작하는데 소요되는 비용과 시간을 1/10 이상 단축시킬 수 있다. 개발된 수동형 다엽 콜리메이터는 성공적으로 양성자 환자치료에 사용하고 있다.