Monte Carlo Simulations Corroborate PET-Measured Discrepancies in Activity Assessments of Commercial Y Vials.

In a recent multicenter study, discrepancies between PET/CT-measured activity and vendor-calibrated activity for Y glass and resin microspheres were found. In the present work, the origin of these discrepancies was investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Three vial configurations, containing Y-chloride, Y-labeled glass microspheres, and Y-labeled resin microspheres, were modeled with GAMOS, and the electric signal generated in an activity meter was simulated.

Updating Y Voxel S-Values including internal Bremsstrahlung: Monte Carlo study and development of an analytical model.

Purpose: Internal Bremsstrahlung (IB) is a process accompanying β-decay but neglected in Voxel S-Values (VSVs) calculation. Aims of this work were to calculate, through Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, updated Y-VSVs including IB, and to develop an analytical model to evaluate Y-VSVs for any voxel size of practical interest.

Methods: GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission) was employed for simulating voxelized geometries of soft tissue, with voxels sides l ranging from 2 to 6 mm, in steps of 0.

Internal Bremsstrahlung, the missing process in beta decay Monte Carlo simulation: The relevance in P Dose-Point-Kernel estimation.

Purpose: In nuclear medicine, Dose Point Kernels (DPKs), representing the energy deposited all around a point isotropic source, are extensively used for dosimetry and are usually obtained by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. For beta-decaying nuclides, DPK is usually estimated neglecting Internal Bremsstrahlung (IB) emission, a process always accompanying the beta decay and consisting in the emission of photons having a continuous spectral distribution. This work aims to study the significance of IB emission for DPK estimation in the case of P and provide DPK values corrected for the IB photon contribution.

F-PSMA-1007 salivary gland dosimetry: comparison between different methods for dose calculation and assessment of inter- and intra-patient variability.

. Simplified calculation approaches and geometries are usually adopted for salivary glands (SGs) dosimetry. Our aims were (i) to compare different dosimetry methods to calculate SGs absorbed doses (ADs) following [F]-PSMA-1007 injection, and (ii) to assess the AD variation across patients and single SG components.

Technical note: The contribution of internal bremsstrahlung to the Y dose point kernel.

Background: Internal dosimetry has an increasing role in the planning and verification of nuclear medicine therapies with radiopharmaceuticals. Dose Point Kernels (DPKs), quantifying the energy deposition all around a point source, in a homogenous medium, are extensively used for 3D dosimetry and nowadays are mostly evaluated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. To our knowledge, DPK for beta emitters is estimated neglecting the continuous photon emission due to the Internal Bremsstrahlung (IB), whose contribution to the absorbed dose can be relevant beyond the maximum range of betas, as evidenced in recent works.

An analytic model to calculate voxel s-values forLu.

.Lu is one of the most employed isotopes in targeted radionuclide therapies and theranostics, and 3D internal dosimetry for such procedures has great importance. Voxel S-Values (VSVs) approach is widely used for this purpose, but VSVs are available for a limited number of voxel dimensions.

Relevance of artefacts inTc-MAA SPECT scans on pre-therapy patient-specificY TARE internal dosimetry: a GATE Monte Carlo study.

The direct Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of radiation transport exploiting morphological and functional tomographic imaging as input data is considered the gold standard for internal dosimetry in nuclear medicine, and it is increasingly used in studies regarding trans-arterial radio-embolization (TARE). However, artefacts affecting the functional scans, such as reconstruction artefacts and motion blurring, decrease the accuracy in defining the radionuclide distribution in the simulations and consequently lead to errors in absorbed dose estimations. In this study, the relevance of such artefacts in patient-specific three-dimensional MC dosimetry was investigated in three cases ofY TARE.

Simplified patient-specific renal dosimetry in Lu therapy: a proof of concept.

Purpose: The aim of this proof-of-concept study is to propose a simplified personalized kidney dosimetry procedure in Lu peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) for neuroendocrine tumors and metastatic prostate cancer. It relies on a single quantitative SPECT/CT acquisition and multiple radiometric measurements executed with a collimated external probe, properly directed on kidneys.

Methods: We conducted a phantom study involving external count-rate measurements in an abdominal phantom setup filled with activity concentrations of Tc, reproducing patient-relevant organ effective half-lives occurring in Lu PRRT.

Relevance of Internal Bremsstrahlung photons from Y decay: an experimental and Monte Carlo study.

Internal Bremsstrahlung (IB) is a continuous electromagnetic radiation accompanying beta decay; however, this process is not considered in radiation protection studies, particularly when estimating exposure from beta-decaying radionuclides. The aims of the present work are: i) to show that neglecting the IB process in Monte Carlo (MC) simulation leads to an underestimation of the energy deposited in a ionization chamber, in the case of a high-energy pure beta emitter such as Yttrium-90 (Y), and ii) to determine the most reliable choice of source term for Y IB to be used in MC simulations. For this radionuclide, commonly employed in nuclear medicine and radiochemistry applications, experimental data acquired with a well ionization chamber have been compared with Monte Carlo (MC) calculations carried out in the GAMOS framework.

Enhancement of radiation exposure risk from β-emitter radionuclides due to Internal Bremsstrahlung effect: A Monte Carlo study of Y case.

Employment of β-decaying radionuclides, used in many fields (industrial, clinical, research) requires a correct assessment of the operators' radiological exposure. Usually, in the dosimetric evaluation, the contribution coming from Internal Bremsstrahlung (IB) accompanying the β-decay is not kept into account; nevertheless, this negligibility does not always appear justified, at least for high-energy β-emitters. By means of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, we showed how the contribution from IB photons is noteworthy for the evaluation of the overall radiation absorbed dose in the case of Y source.

Internal dosimetry for TARE therapies by means of GAMOS Monte Carlo simulations.

Three-dimensional internal dosimetry is increasingly used in planning Trans-Arterial Radio-Embolization (TARE) of HepatoCellular Carcinoma (HCC). Among the existing calculation approaches, Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is the gold standard. Aim of this work was to carry out a retrospective study of clinical cases of TARE to compare the performances of different computation approaches.

Efficacy of Vemurafenib in Patients With Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer With V600 Mutation: An Open-Label, Single-Arm Cohort of the Histology-Independent VE-BASKET Study.

Purpose: To study whether V600 mutations in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may indicate sensitivity to the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib, we included a cohort of patients with NSCLC in the vemurafenib basket (VE-BASKET) study. On the basis of observed early clinical activity, we expanded the cohort of patients with NSCLC. We present results from this cohort.

Radiation protection from external exposure to radionuclides: A Monte Carlo data handbook.

The availability of a resource collecting dose factors for the evaluation of the absorbed doses from external exposure during the manipulation of radioactive substances is fundamental for radiological protection purposes. Monte Carlo simulations are useful for the accurate calculation of dose distributions in complex geometries, particularly in presence of extended spectra of multi-radiation sources. We considered, as possible irradiation scenarios, a point source, a uniform planar source resembling a contaminated surface, several source volumes contained in plastic or glass receptacles, and the direct skin contamination case, implementing the corresponding Monte Carlo simulations in GAMOS (GEANT4-based Architecture for Medicine-Oriented Simulations).

Evaluation of skin absorbed doses during manipulation of radioactive sources: a comparison between the VARSKIN code and Monte Carlo simulations.

The evaluation of skin doses during manipulation of radioactive sources can be a critical issue for which the most accurate calculation strategies available should be used. The aim of this work was to compare the results of the analytical approach used in VARSKIN with the simulation of radiation transport and interaction by Monte Carlo calculations in GAMOS (GEANT4-based Architecture for Medicine-Oriented Simulations), and to provide an accurate and versatile tool for the evaluation of skin doses from radionuclide sources of any realistic shape (e.g.

A Monte Carlo approach to small-scale dosimetry of solid tumour microvasculature for nuclear medicine therapies with (223)Ra-, (131)I-, (177)Lu- and (111)In-labelled radiopharmaceuticals.

The small-scale dosimetry of radionuclides in solid-tumours is directly related to the intra-tumoral distribution of the administered radiopharmaceutical, which is affected by its egress from the vasculature and dispersion within the tumour. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the combined dosimetric effects of radiopharmaceutical distribution and range of the emitted radiation in a model of tumour microvasculature. We developed a computational model of solid-tumour microenvironment around a blood capillary vessel, and we simulated the transport of radiation emitted by (223)Ra, (111)In, (131)I and (177)Lu using the GEANT4 Monte Carlo.

An analytical model for calculating internal dose conversion coefficients for non-human biota.

To assess the radiation burden of non-human living organisms, dose coefficients are available in the literature, precalculated by assuming an ellipsoidal shape of each organism. A previously developed analytical method was applied for the determination of absorbed fractions inside ellipsoidal volumes from alpha, beta, and gamma radiations to the calculation of dose conversion coefficients (DCCs) for 15 reference organisms, animals and plants, either terrestrial, amphibian, or aquatic, and six radionuclides ((14)C, (90)Sr, (60)Co, (137)Cs, (238)U, and (241)Am). The results were compared with the reference values reported in Publication 108 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, in which a different calculation approach for DCCs was employed.

Absorbed fractions for alpha particles in ellipsoidal volumes.

Internal dosimetry of alpha particles is gaining attention due to the increasing applications in cancer treatment and also for the assessment of environmental contamination from radionuclides. We developed a Monte Carlo simulation in GEANT4 in order to calculate the absorbed fractions for monoenergetic alpha particles in the energy interval between 0.1 and 10 MeV, uniformly distributed in ellipsoids made of soft tissue.

Monte Carlo study of the dose enhancement effect of gold nanoparticles during X-ray therapies and evaluation of the anti-angiogenic effect on tumour capillary vessels.

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are a promising radiosensitizer agent in radiotherapy. Through a simulation performed with the Geant4 Monte Carlo code, we evaluated the dose enhancement effect of GNPs during therapies with an x-ray tube operating at 150 kV (E = 55 keV and E(max) = 150 keV) and we studied the impact of GNP diffusion out of the tumour vessels, in terms of antiangiogenic and cytotoxic effects. Firstly, a single x-ray beam was assumed to irradiate a parallelepiped volume of soft tissue, in which a GNP-doped "target" volume was placed at different depths.