Fetal organ dosimetry for the Techa River and Ozyorsk offspring cohorts, part 1: a Urals-based series of fetal computational phantoms.

ABSTRACT

The European Union's SOLO (Epidemiological Studies of Exposed Southern Urals Populations) project aims to improve understanding of cancer risks associated with chronic in utero radiation exposure. A comprehensive series of hybrid computational fetal phantoms was previously developed at the University of Florida in order to provide the SOLO project with the capability of computationally simulating and quantifying radiation exposures to individual fetal bones and soft tissue organs. To improve harmonization between the SOLO fetal biokinetic models and the computational phantoms, a subset of those phantoms was systematically modified to create a novel series of phantoms matching anatomical data representing Russian fetal biometry in the Southern Urals. Using previously established modeling techniques, eight computational Urals-based phantoms aged 8, 12, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, and 38 weeks post-conception were constructed to match appropriate age-dependent femur lengths, biparietal diameters, individual bone masses and whole-body masses. Bone and soft tissue organ mass differences between the common ages of the subset of UF phantom series and the Urals-based phantom series illustrated the need for improved understanding of fetal bone densities as a critical parameter of computational phantom development. In anticipation for SOLO radiation dosimetry studies involving the developing fetus and pregnant female, the completed phantom series was successfully converted to a cuboidal voxel format easily interpreted by radiation transport software.