Comparative study for intermediate crystal size of NaI(Tl) scintillation detector

Age-specific calibration for in vivo monitoring of thyroid: is it necessary?

Usually, an age-specific calibration of detectors used for in vivo monitoring of ¹³¹I thyroid radioactivity is not performed in practice. This study aimed to investigate the reduction in uncertainty that one can expect if an age-specific calibration is performed. For this, voxel and stylized computational phantoms of the thyroid, corresponding to children at different age groups, were used to simulate the calibration process of ¹³¹I detectors used for thyroid monitoring. SCK•CEN physical phantoms were also used for this purpose. Both analytical and Monte Carlo methods (MCNPX version 2.6.0) were used to estimate the counting efficiencies of the considered detectors. The results show that the uncertainties in the assessment of thyroid activity at a distance of 20 cm would be reduced from a range of +8% to +30%, to a range from - 6% to +15% when age-specific calibration was performed. Using a calibration based on thyroids of adults would result in an overestimation of the thyroid activity for children by up to 30% at a detector-neck distance of about 20 cm; a larger overestimation may be expected at closer distances. It is concluded that age-specific calibration of in vivo monitoring systems for the thyroid is important and has to be taken into consideration to improve the reliability of thyroid dose assessment for children.

A Brief Review on the High-Energy Electromagnetic Radiation-Shielding Materials Based on Polymer Nanocomposites

This paper revises the use of polymer nanocomposites to attenuate high-energy electromagnetic radiation (HE-EMR), such as gamma radiation. As known, high-energy radiation produces drastic damage not only in facilities or electronic devices but also to life and the environment. Among the different approaches to attenuate the HE-EMR, we consider the use of compounds with a high atomic number (Z), such as lead, but as known, lead is toxic. Therefore, different works have considered low-toxicity post-transitional metal-based compounds, such as bismuth. Additionally, nanosized particles have shown higher performance to attenuate HE-EMR than those that are micro-sized. On the other hand, materials with π-conjugated systems can also play a role in spreading the energy of electrons ejected as a consequence of the interaction of HE-EMR with matter, preventing the ionization and bond scission of polymers. The different effects produced by the interactions of the matter with HE-EMR are revised. The increase of the shielding properties of lightweight, flexible, and versatile materials such as polymer-based materials can be a contribution for developing technologies to obtain more efficient materials for preventing the damage produced for the HE-EMR in different industries where it is found.

Direct energy spectrum measurement of X-ray from a clinical linac

A realistic X‐ray energy spectrum is essential for accurate dose calculation using the Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm. An energy spectrum for dose calculation in the radiation treatment planning system is modeled using the MC algorithm and adjusted to obtain acceptable agreement with the measured percent depth dose (PDD) and off‐axis ratio. The simulated energy spectrum may not consistently reproduce a realistic energy spectrum. Therefore, direct measurement of the X‐ray energy spectrum from a linac is necessary to obtain a realistic spectrum. Previous studies have measured low photon fluence directly, but the measurement was performed with a nonclinical linac with a thick target and a long target‐to‐detector distance. In this study, an X‐ray energy spectrum from a clinical linac was directly measured using a NaI(Tl) scintillator at an ultralow dose rate achieved by adjusting the gun grid voltage. The measured energy spectrum was unfolded by the Gold algorithm and compared with a simulated spectrum using statistical tests. Furthermore, the PDD was calculated using an unfolded energy spectrum and a simulated energy spectrum was compared with the measured PDD to evaluate the validity of the unfolded energy spectrum. Consequently, there was no significant difference between the unfolded and simulated energy spectra by nonparametric, Wilcoxon's rank‐sum, chi‐square, and two‐sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests with a significance level of 0.05. However, the PDD calculated from the unfolded energy spectrum better agreed with the measured compared to the calculated PDD results from the simulated energy spectrum. The adjustment of the incident electron parameters using MC simulation is sensitive and takes time. Therefore, it is desirable to obtain the energy spectrum by direct measurement. Thus, a method to obtain the realistic energy spectrum by direct measurement was proposed in this study.