Hybrid Phantom Applications to Nuclear Medicine

Annually, many people are irradiated for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Assessment of radiation dose and its related risks to patients are important issues in radiation protection dosimetry. The complex mathematical calculations of the absorbed and effective doses are now done with computers. The calculations are performed with the help of anthropomorphic computational models of human body called phantoms and Monte Carlo codes (MCNP). There are various types of phantoms, yet the latest type is hybrid phantom which has been introduced to the scientific community in recent years. Hybrid phantom is the connection between mathematical and voxel phantoms. They retain both the anatomic realism of voxel phantoms and the flexibility of mathematical phantoms. Using hybrid phantoms, the absorbed doses can be determined for any patients before they are exposed to radiation. Then, the energy of the emitted particles and irradiation geometry can be determined for any special purposes. A hybrid phantom is under construction for Iranian patients to be used in different applications such as testing new radiopharmaceuticals or cancer treatments with high LET radiation. Herein, we report on our findings.