Assessment of uncertainties in the lung activity measurement of low-energy photon emitters using Monte Carlo simulation of ICRP male thorax voxel phantom.

Abstract

Assessment of intake due to long-lived actinides by inhalation pathway is carried out by lung monitoring of the radiation workers inside totally shielded steel room using sensitive detection systems such as Phoswich and an array of HPGe detectors. In this paper, uncertainties in the lung activity estimation due to positional errors, chest wall thickness (CWT) and detector background variation are evaluated. First, calibration factors (CFs) of Phoswich and an array of three HPGe detectors are estimated by incorporating ICRP male thorax voxel phantom and detectors in Monte Carlo code 'FLUKA'. CFs are estimated for the uniform source distribution in lungs of the phantom for various photon energies. The variation in the CFs for positional errors of ±0.5, 1 and 1.5 cm in horizontal and vertical direction along the chest are studied. The positional errors are also evaluated by resizing the voxel phantom. Combined uncertainties are estimated at different energies using the uncertainties due to CWT, detector positioning, detector background variation of an uncontaminated adult person and counting statistics in the form of scattering factors (SFs). SFs are found to decrease with increase in energy. With HPGe array, highest SF of 1.84 is found at 18 keV. It reduces to 1.36 at 238 keV.