https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05096-0
Regular Article
Evaluation of RESRAD-BUILD and MicroShield codes for the simulation of small accident scenarios in nuclear medicine therapy patients’ rooms
1
Core Facilities, Istituto Superiore Di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161, Rome, Italy
2
National Center for Innovation Technology in Public Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161, Rome, Italy
3
DIT, INAIL, Via Torraccio Di Torrenova 7, 00133, Rome, Italy
4
Radiation Protection Institute, ENEA, Via Martiri Di Monte Sole 4, 40129, Bologna, Italy
5
National Center for Radiation Protection and Computational Physics, Istituto Superiore Di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161, Rome, Italy
Received:
5
August
2023
Accepted:
11
March
2024
Published online:
24
April
2024
Computational methods in nuclear medicine therapy can be very useful for estimating the external dose in non-routine situations when conventional dosimeters may be inadequate or unavailable. Monte Carlo techniques provide the most accurate approach when it comes to model complex scenarios, but they are time and machine resource consuming. In this work we explore the alternative of using two fast and interactive deterministic codes, RESRAD-BUILD and MicroShield, primarily designed for radiation protection purposes, to calculate the dose in small, simple accidental scenarios, and benchmarked them with two Monte Carlo simulation tools, MCNP6 and Geant4. The absorbed dose rate in air computed by RESRAD-BUILD and compared to MicroShield showed a mean ratio of 1.01 ± 0.04 for Lu-177 and 0.99 ± 0.04 in the case of a point source and within 25% for an area source. When compared to MCNP6 and Geant4, the results revealed an overall agreement among the codes, showing a deviation below 30% in most cases, with a few exceptions that are discussed. We also propose a preliminary approach for easy modeling of patient's organs to calculate the external dose from routine therapies with deterministic methods. The suitability and limitation of these models are presented and discussed for some common applications.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
