Comparison of computational phantoms and investigation of the effect of biodistribution on activity estimations

Journal article, 2015

We have made a comparison between two computational phantoms, modeled from the unified phantom UPh-08T, for whole-body counting applications. One of these was further compared with the ICRP reference adult male computational phantom. The simulations that were performed for the comparison of all three voxel phantoms use various distributions of 60Co. The two voxel phantoms of the UPh-08T showed good agreement, despite different methods of phantom modeling. Also, effects on efficiency of the inhomogeneous distribution of a radionuclide in the computational UPh-08T phantom were studied, using the realistic biodistribution of 140La. Our results show that the activity estimation of radionuclides, which are inhomogeneously distributed in the human body, will be in error if a homogeneous distribution is assumed for the calibration of whole-body counting systems.