Application for internal dosimetry using biokinetic distribution of photons based on nuclear medicine images.
OBJECTIVE
This article presents a way to obtain estimates of dose in patients submitted to radiotherapy with basis on the analysis of regions of interest on nuclear medicine images.


METHODS
A software called DoRadIo (Dosimetria das Radiações Ionizantes [Ionizing Radiation Dosimetry]) was developed to receive information about source organs and target organs, generating graphical and numerical results. The nuclear medicine images utilized in the present study were obtained from catalogs provided by medical physicists. The simulations were performed with computational exposure models consisting of voxel phantoms coupled with the Monte Carlo EGSnrc code. The software was developed with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack and the project template Windows Presentation Foundation for C# programming language.


RESULTS
With the mentioned tools, the authors obtained the file for optimization of Monte Carlo simulations using the EGSnrc; organization and compaction of dosimetry results with all radioactive sources; selection of regions of interest; evaluation of grayscale intensity in regions of interest; the file of weighted sources; and, finally, all the charts and numerical results.


CONCLUSIONS
The user interface may be adapted for use in clinical nuclear medicine as a computer-aided tool to estimate the administered activity.
PhD, Teacher and Researcher at Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco (IFPE), Recife, PE, Brazil.
Viriato
V
Leal Neto
PhD, Researcher, Member of the Department of Nuclear Energy Post-graduation Program - Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Teacher at Escola Politécnica de Pernambuco - Universidade de Pernambuco (UPE), Recife, PE, Brazil.
José Wilson
JW
Vieira
PhD, Researcher, Member of the Department of Nuclear Energy Post-graduation Program - Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Researcher at Centro Regional de Ciências Nucleares (CRCN), Recife, PE, Brazil.
Fernando Roberto de Andrade
FR
Lima
Administered activity; Biokinetic distribution; Dosimetric evaluations; Nuclear medicine