Radioprotection No 59-4 | Page 64

A . Bouzouita et al .: Radioprotection 2024 , 59 ( 4 ), 296 – 305 303
Table 5 . Averaged organ DCFs for male and female ICRP110 phantoms compared to values obtained from published ICRP 144 report data using the same phantom type ( ICRP , 2020 ).
Organs
238 U
232 Th
40 K
ICRP 144
This work
ICRP 144
This work
ICRP 144
This work
Adrenals
0.346
0.372
0.426
0.453
0.032
0.036
Brain
0.347
0.412
0.428
0.528
0.036
0.043
Breast
0.366
0.434
0.448
0.553
0.040
0.043
Colon
0.401
0.384
0.503
0.501
0.039
0.040
Gonads
0.368
0.430
0.449
0.580
0.038
0.043
Kidneys
0.338
0.359
0.416
0.468
0.033
0.037
Liver
0.342
0.375
0.420
0.487
0.036
0.039
Lungs
0.364
0.425
0.444
0.546
0.039
0.045
Muscles
0.423
0.461
0.516
0.594
0.040
0.048
Oesophagus
0.264
0.357
0.300
0.468
0.033
0.037
Pancreas
0.324
0.359
0.401
0.465
0.031
0.037
Red bone marrow
0.238
0.244
0.300
0.303
0.029
0.024
Skin
0.482
0.526
0.469
0.663
0.049
0.055
Spleen
0.324
0.368
0.399
0.474
0.032
0.038
Thymus
0.352
0.378
0.432
0.487
0.036
0.040
Thyroid
0.359
0.362
0.451
0.467
0.033
0.038
Fig . 3 . Discrepancy between the DCFs values of the present work and those from ( Sanusi et al ., 2021 ).
in a significant computation time gain , eliminating the need for physical approximations such as locally killing the secondary particles , reducing the entire gamma ray spectrum or minimising the soil and air volume dimensions ( Sanusi et al ., 2021 ; Zankl et al ., 1997 ).
Table 6 compares the effective dose derived from organ DCFs in our study with literature values . Although the discrepancy in organ DCFs between the present work and the literature is relatively large , the values of the effective doses are close to each other . This is because the organ tissue factors w T used in equation ( 2 ) for calculating the effective dose are very low weighting factors . This leads to the conclusion that investigation on more detailed dose assessment is necessary .
4 Conclusion
We performed a two-stage Monte Carlo simulation using Geant4 to calculate dose-to-organ conversion factors ( DCFs ) for external gamma radiation exposure from grounddistributed radioactive sources . Voxel-based ICRP110 female and male phantoms and an optimised soil-air geometry were used to realistically transport particles and save computing time without physical approximations . We determined DCFs for the 238 Uand 232 Th series , and the radionuclides 40 Kand 137 Cs , and tabulated results for 55 female and 54 male organs .
Our results are higher than published values using less accurate MIRD phantoms . The results indirectly obtained