Measurement Techniques for Radium and the Actinides in Man at the Center for Human Radiobiology

Abstract

Various techniques are employed to determine the amounts, retention, and distribution of radioactivity in human subjects in vivo. The principal method is gamma-ray spectrometry with large NaI(Tl) scintillation crystals (“whole-body counting”). The geometries used include an arc of 1.5-m radius in which all parts of the body are roughly equidistant from the detector, a reclining chair and a flat bed with detectors placed above and below the subject. When a sufficient amount of radioactivity is present in a subject, scanning techniques assist in determining its distribution in the body. Specialized instruments such as a xenon-filled proportional counter and a dual-crystal (phoswich) detector are used to measure low-energy photon emitters, primarily plutonium and americium. There are three primary methods of calibrating the detectors. The first is analytical, in which a rigorous mathematical treatment is employed; the second involves the administration of tracer amounts of radioactivity to human volunteers; the third consists of determining detector response to known amounts of radioactivity in a phantom. All three methods can be intercompared, and further evaluated by comparing the results of measurements in vivo with those of postmortem analyses. For both radium and thorium cases measured in vivo, the interpretation of the results is complicated by the fact that neither radium nor thorium emit gamma rays of any consequence. Instead, the observed gamma rays result from the decay of 214Bi (RaC) and 208Tl (ThC″), respectively. Since each of these nuclides is preceded in the decay chain by an isotope of the noble gas radon, some of which is exhaled, its activity is not equal to that of the parent radium or thorium. Therefore, breath samples are collected to determine the exhalation rate of the precursor isotope, 222Rn (radon) or 220Rn (thoron). The total body content is then the sum of the gamma activity and the exhaled radioactivity, referred to as the retained and emanating fractions, respectively.