When space limitations are primary constraints, laminated barriers with metals can be an option to provide sufficient shielding for a radiotherapy treatment room. However, if a photon clinical beam with end point energy of 10 MeV or higher interacts with the metal inside the barriers neutrons are ejected and can result in an exposure problem inside and outside the vault. The empirical formulae existing in the literature to estimate neutron dose equivalents beyond laminated barriers do not take into account neutron production for spectra below 15 MV. In this work, the Monte Carlo code MCNP was used to simulate the production and transport of photoneutrons across primary barriers of 10 MV accelerator treatment rooms containing lead or steel, in order to obtain the ambient dose equivalents produced by these particles outside the room and in the patient plane. It was found that the neutron doses produced are insignificant when steel is present in the primary barriers of 10 MV medical accelerators. On the other hand, the results show that, in all cases where lead sheets are positioned in the primary barriers, the neutron ambient dose equivalents outside the room generally exceed the shielding design goal of 20 microSv/week for uncontrolled areas, even when the lead sheets are positioned inside the treatment room. Moreover, for laminated barriers, the photoneutrons produced in the metals are summed with the particles generated in the accelerator head shielding and can represent a significant component of additional dose to the patients. In this work, it was found that once lead sheets are positioned inside the room, the neutron ambient dose equivalents can reach the value of 75 microSv per Gray of photon absorbed dose at the isocenter. However, for all simulated cases, a tendency in the reduction of neutron doses with increasing lead thickness can be observed. This trend can imply in higher neutron ambient dose equivalents outside the room for thinner lead sheets. Therefore, when a medical accelerator treatment room is designed with laminated barriers to receive equipment with an end point energy equal to or higher than 10 MeV, not only the required shielding thickness for photon radiation attenuation should be considered, but also the dose due to photoneutrons produced in the metal, which may involve an increase of the lead thickness or even the use of neutron shielding.
In this paper, the general-purpose Monte Carlo code MCNP5 was used to study the dose variance due to the position of medical linear accelerators, under unusual conditions, for shielding design of radiotherapy facilities. It was found that the computational methods generally used to estimate the scattered photon doses at the entrance of radiotherapy unit vaults provide conservative results when compared with the MCNP results, considering the standard condition. On the other hand, for the situations where the axis of gantry rotation is redirected at, for example, 45 degrees with respect to the walls of the room, the photon doses at the entrance can reach values up to seven times higher than those obtained under the standard condition, depending on the energy of the primary beam.
This work present the application of a computer package for generating of projection data for neutron computerized tomography, and in second part, discusses an application of neutron tomography, using the projection data obtained by Monte Carlo technique, for the detection and localization of light materials such as those containing hydrogen, concealed by heavy materials such as iron and lead. For tomographic reconstructions of the samples simulated use was made of only six equal projection angles distributed between 0º and 180º, with reconstruction making use of an algorithm (ARIEM), based on the principle of maximum entropy. With the neutron tomography it was possible to detect and locate polyethylene and water hidden by lead and iron (with 1cm-thick). Thus, it is demonstrated that thermal neutrons tomography is a viable test method which can provide important interior information about test components, so, extremely useful in routine industrial applications
The Brazilian Instituto de Radioproteção e Dosimetria (IRD) runs a neutron individual monitoring system with a home-made TLD albedo dosemeter. It has already been characterised and calibrated in some reference fields. However, the complete energy response of this dosemeter is not known, and the calibration factors for all monitored workplace neutron fields are difficult to be obtained experimentally. Therefore, to overcome such difficulties, Monte Carlo simulations have been used. This paper describes the simulation of the HP(10) neutron response of the IRD TLD albedo dosemeter using the MCNPX transport code, for energies from thermal to 20 MeV. The validation of the MCNPX modelling is done comparing the simulated results with the experimental measurements for ISO standard neutron fields of (241)Am-Be, (252)Cf, (241)Am-B and (252)Cf(D2O) and also for (241)Am-Be source moderated with paraffin and silicone. Bare (252)Cf are used for normalisation.
This study aims to investigate a shielding design against neutrons and gamma rays from a source of 252Cf, using Monte Carlo simulation. The shielding materials studied were borated polyethylene, borated-lead polyethylene and stainless steel. The Monte Carlo code MCNP4B was used to design shielding for 252Cf based neutron irradiator systems. By normalising the dose equivalent rate values presented to the neutron production rate of the source, the resulting calculations are independent of the intensity of the actual 252Cf source. The results show that the total dose equivalent rates were reduced significantly by the shielding system optimisation.
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