title: A small-scale anatomical dosimetry model of the liver.
abstract: Radionuclide therapy is a growing and promising approach for treating and prolonging the lives of patients with cancer. For therapies where high activities are administered, the liver can become a dose-limiting organ; often with a complex, non-uniform activity distribution and resulting non-uniform absorbed-dose distribution. This paper therefore presents a small-scale dosimetry model for various source-target combinations within the human liver microarchitecture. Using Monte Carlo simulations, Medical Internal Radiation Dose formalism-compatible specific absorbed fractions were calculated for monoenergetic electrons; photons; alpha particles; and (125)I, (90)Y, (211)At, (99m)Tc, (111)In, (177)Lu, (131)I and (18)F. S values and the ratio of local absorbed dose to the whole-organ average absorbed dose was calculated, enabling a transformation of dosimetry calculations from macro- to microstructure level. For heterogeneous activity distributions, for example uptake in Kupffer cells of radionuclides emitting low-energy electrons ((125)I) or high-LET alpha particles ((211)At) the target absorbed dose for the part of the space of Disse, closest to the source, was more than eight- and five-fold the average absorbed dose to the liver, respectively. With the increasing interest in radionuclide therapy of the liver, the presented model is an applicable tool for small-scale liver dosimetry in order to study detailed dose-effect relationships in the liver.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Radiation Physics, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stenvall
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Larsson
authors.forename: Sven-Erik
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Strand
authors.forename: Bo-Anders
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Jönsson
mesh_terms: D001158:Arteries / Q000528:radiation effects; D006801:Humans; D007728:Kupffer Cells / Q000528:radiation effects; D008099:Liver / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000098:blood supply / Q000166:cytology / Q000528:radiation effects*; D008954:Models, Biological; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011874:Radiometry