Effective dose evaluation for BNCT brain tumor treatment based on voxel phantoms.

For BNCT treatments, in addition to tumor target doses, non-negligible doses will result in all the remaining organs of the body. This work aims to evaluate the effective dose as well as the average absorbed doses of each of organs of patients with brain tumor treated in the BNCT epithermal neutron beam at THOR. The effective doses were evaluated according to the definitions of ICRP Publications 60 and 103 for the reference male and female computational phantoms developed in ICRP Publication 110 by using the MCNP5 Monte Carlo code with the THOR-Y09 beam source. The effective dose acquired in this work was compared with the results of our previous work calculated for an adult hermaphrodite mathematical phantom. It was found that the effective dose for the female voxel phantom is larger than that for the male voxel phantom by a factor of 1.2-1.5 and the effective dose for the voxel phantom is larger than that for the mathematical phantom by a factor of 1.3-1.6. For a typical brain tumor BNCT, the effective dose was calculated to be 1.51Sv and the average absorbed dose for eye lenses was 1.07Gy.

Dose evaluation of boron neutron capture synovectomy using the THOR epithermal neutron beam: a feasibility study.

Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common epidemic diseases in the world. For some patients, the treatment with steroids or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is not effective, thus necessitating physical removal of the inflamed synovium. Alternative approaches other than surgery will provide appropriate disease control and improve the patient's quality of life. In this research, we evaluated the feasibility of conducting boron neutron capture synovectomy (BNCS) with the Tsing Hua open-pool reactor (THOR) as a neutron source. Monte Carlo simulations were performed with arthritic joint models and uncertainties were within 5%. The collimator, reflector and boron concentration were optimized to reduce the treatment time and normal tissue doses. For the knee joint, polyethylene with 40%-enriched Li(2)CO(3) was used as the collimator material, and a rear reflector of 15 cm thick graphite and side reflector of 10 cm thick graphite were chosen. The optimized treatment time was 5.4 min for the parallel-opposed irradiation. For the finger joint, polymethyl methacrylate was used as the reflector material. The treatment time can be reduced to 3.1 min, while skin and bone doses can be effectively reduced by approximately 9% compared with treatment using the graphite reflector. We conclude that using THOR as a treatment modality for BNCS could be a feasible alternative in clinical practice.