title: Models and phantoms for internal dose assessment.
abstract: Radiation doses delivered by incorporated radionuclides cannot be directly measured, and they are assessed by means of biokinetic and dosimetric models and computational phantoms. For emitters of short-range radiation like alpha-particles or Auger electrons, the doses at organ levels, as they are usually defined in internal dosimetry, are no longer relevant. Modelling the inter- and intra-cellular radiation transport and the local patterns of deposition at molecular or cellular levels are the challenging tasks of micro- and nano-dosimetry. With time, the physiological and anatomical realism of the models and phantoms have increased. However, not always the information is available that would be required to characterise the greater complexity of the recent models. Uncertainty studies in internal dose assessment provide here a valuable contribution for testing the significance of the new dose estimates and of the discrepancies from the previous values. Some of the challenges, limitations and future perspectives of the use of models and phantoms in internal dosimetry are discussed in the present manuscript.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation and Health, BfS-Federal Office for Radiation Protection, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, Oberschleißheim 85764, Germany agiussani@bfs.de.
authors.forename: Augusto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Giussani
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry*; D001822:Body Burden; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009928:Organ Specificity; D011868:Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis* / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D014018:Tissue Distribution; D014915:Whole-Body Counting / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D011868:Radioisotopes