An Eye Model for Computational Dosimetry Using A Multi-Scale Voxel Phantom

¹ Nuclear Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA 12180-3590
² Radiation Protection Department, PerkinElmer, Boston, MA USA
³ Medical Physics Division, Department of Radiation Oncology, Virgina Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA USA

^* Corresponding Author, E-mail: caracp3@rpi.edu

Abstract

The lens of the eye is a radiosensitive tissue with cataract formation being the major concern. Recently reduced recommended dose limits to the lens of the eye have made understanding the dose to this tissue of increased importance. Due to memory limitations, the voxel resolution of computational phantoms used for radiation dose calculations is too large to accurately represent the dimensions of the eye. A revised eye model is constructed using physiological data for the dimensions of radiosensitive tissues, and is then transformed into a high-resolution voxel model. This eye model is combined with an existing set of whole body models to form a multi-scale voxel phantom, which is used with the MCNPX code to calculate radiation dose from various exposure types. This phantom provides an accurate representation of the radiation transport through the structures of the eye. Two alternate methods of including a high-resolution eye model within an existing whole body model are developed. The accuracy and performance of each method is compared against existing computational phantoms.