ICRP Publication 143: Paediatric Reference Computational Phantoms

Abstract

As most readers will already know, the 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (Publication 103; ICRP, 2007) set out the foundations of the current system of radiological protection. Now 13 years old, most international guidance and many national regulations relating to radiological protection are based on Publication 103. An important new feature in the 2007 Recommendations was a change in the way that doses from internal and external sources of ionising radiation were calculated. Previously, relatively simple mathematical models of the human body were used to calculate how energy from exposure to radiation is deposited in the various organs and tissues. With Publication 103 (ICRP, 2007), more sophisticated reference computational phantoms based on medical tomographic images replaced the simpler models. Priority was given to developing reference computational phantoms for the adult male and female, as these are needed to calculate doses related to occupational exposure. These two phantoms, presented in Publication 110 (ICRP, 2009), are based on digitised medical image data of real people whose body height and mass were close to the reference data. The result was voxel (three-dimensional pixel) phantoms consistent with the reference anatomical and physiological parameters for males and females laid out in Publication 89 (ICRP, 2002). The enormity of the effort and specialised skills needed to develop these phantoms may not be immediately obvious. Adjustment of the medical imaging data to match the reference parameters and a suitable posture was painstaking, as was the segmentation of the phantom into individual organs and tissues. These reference phantoms were used to develop the dose coefficients for internal occupational exposure published in the Occupational Intakes of Radionuclides series of publications (ICRP, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019), and the dose conversion coefficients for external exposures in Publication 116 (ICRP, 2010). The current publication completes the reference computational phantom family, so that doses to non-adults can also be calculated. It is a large family: in addition to the two adult phantoms are 10 computational phantoms representing the Reference Male ß 2020 ICRP. Published by SAGE.

Assessment of the impact of CT calibration procedures for proton therapy planning on pediatric treatments

“…Furthermore, age-dependent volumes and masses of the different skeletal tissues are considered [27]. A list of the tissues considered in this work can be found in Appendix C of this work, a full list of elemental compositions and densities can be found in ICRP Publication 143 [28], Annex B.…”

“…To derive the age-specific single-energy CT calibration, we use the fit parameters K ph , K coh and K KN from above (140 kVp spectrum) to calculate the CT numbers of the 53 paediatric tissues, taken from ICRP Publication 143 [28] and described above (section II A). Linear curves are fitted section-wise using the so calculated CT This article is protected by copyright.…”

“…The composition data from White et al were adapted into the ICRU report 46 [20], which recommends that age dependencies should be taken into account when dosimetric data are calculated. In an effort to develop paediatric voxelised phantoms [23,24] for radiation dosimetry and radiation protection, standardised elemental compositions and densities of 53 body tissues were derived for paediatric patients by the University of Florida (UF) [25][26][27], which have now been published in ICRP Publication 143 [28].…”

Estimating Organ Doses from Pediatric Cerebral Computed Tomography Using the WAZA-ARI Web-Based Calculator

“…Nevertheless, if more accurate organ dose to a patient is required in case higher doses happen, it is appropriate to use a linear interpolation based on the estimation results using couple of phantoms [18]. It will be worthy to note the latest pediatric reference computational phantoms developed [19]. The ICRP Publication 143 defines as series of 10 computational phantoms representing reference male and female at birth (newborn), 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years of age.…”

The IRPA Young Generation Network: Activity Report from the Middle of 2018 to the Beginning of 2021

“…We compared the resulting organ doses from the two Korean phantoms with those from Caucasian reference phantoms published from the ICRP [25,26]. To calculate organ dose for the ICRP Caucasian phantoms, we used a previously-published computer program for CT dose calculation, National Cancer Institute dosimetry system for CT (NCICT) [19], which is based on the organ dose database calculated from the ICRP pediatric and adult phantoms.…”