ICRP pregnant-female mesh-type reference computational phantoms part 1: development of fetal phantoms.

Abstract

<i>Objective</i>. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) decided to develop pregnant-female reference computational phantoms, including the maternal and fetal phantoms, through its 2007 general recommendations. Acknowledging the advantages of the mesh geometry, the ICRP decided to develop the pregnant-female mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs) for 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 38 week fetal ages directly in the mesh format. As part of this process, the present study developed the mesh-type fetal phantoms.<i>Approach</i>. The reference blood-inclusive organ masses, elemental compositions, and densities were established based on various scientific literatures. Then, the phantoms were developed in accordance with the established reference dataset while reflecting the anatomical features of the developing fetus, such as fetal-age-specific anthropometric parameters, bone ossification, and contents formation time.<i>Main results</i>. The phantoms were developed in the tetrahedral-mesh format and can be implemented in the general-purpose Monte Carlo codes (i.e. Geant4, PHITS, MCNP6, and EGSnrc) without the necessity of the voxelization process. To explore the dosimetric impact of the developed phantoms, photon specific absorbed fractions (SAFs) were computed for energies between 10^-2-10¹MeV for the fetal liver and spleen as source regions and self-irradiation and cross-irradiation to the fetal brain, lungs, and urinary bladder wall as target regions. The SAFs showed the fetal-age-dependent dose trends (i.e. SAF decreases with increasing fetal age) due to organ masses increases via fetal growth.<i>Significance</i>. The mesh-type fetal phantoms, as part of the ICRP pregnant-female MRCPs, will be used to calculate reference dose coefficients for fetal members of the public for both the current and future ICRP general recommendations.