Assessment of FLUKA, PENELOPE and MCNP6 Monte Carlo codes for estimating gold fluorescence applied to the detection of gold-infused tumoral volumes

VALENTE, MAURO

APPLIED RADIATION AND ISOTOPES

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2019

0969-8043

ifferent kinds of nanoparticles have been widely studied for biomedical purposes, including applications like dose enhancement in radiotherapy treatments and contrast agent in radiological studies. Recent work suggests that gold nanoparticles can be used as contrast agents in K-edge imaging and X-ray Fluorescence Computed Tomography, mainly due to their high K-edge energy value and good biocompatibility. However, the gold X-ray fluorescence (XRF) signal obtained in these procedures is relatively week when compared with Compton or bremsstrahlung radiation emitted in the surrounding tissues, mainly because it is not possible to achieve large gold nanoparticles concentrations within biological tissues added to the XRF is attenuated by other tissues when leaving the patient body.This work presents a feasibility study on implementation of FLUKA, PENELOPE and MCNP6 Monte Carlo codes to model the detection of gold XRF emitted by a small volume containing different gold concentrations and loc