Aplicação de método Monte Carlo para cálculos de dose em folículos tiroideanos

Abstract

The Monte Carlo method is an important tool to simulate radioactive particles interaction with biologic medium. The principal advantage of the method when compared with deterministic methods is the ability to simulate a complex geometry. Several computational codes use the Monte Carlo method to simulate the particles transport and they have the capacity to simulate energy deposition in models of organs and/or tissues, as well models of cells of human body. Thus, the calculation of the absorbed dose to thyroid’s follicles (compound of colloid and follicles’ cells) have a fundamental importance to dosimetry, because these cells are radiosensitive due to ionizing radiation exposition, in particular, exposition due to radioisotopes of iodine, because a great amount of radioiodine may be released into the environment in case of a nuclear accidents. In this case, the goal of this work was use the code of particles transport MNCP4C to calculate absorbed doses in models of thyroid’s follicles, for Auger electrons, internal conversion electrons and beta particles, by iodine-131 and short-lived iodines (131, 132, 133, 134 e 135), with diameters varying from 30 to 500 μm. The results obtained from simulation with the MCNP4C code shown an average percentage of the 25% of total absorbed dose by colloid to iodine- 131 and 75% to short-lived iodine’s. For follicular cells, this percentage was of 13% toiodine-131 and 87% to short-lived iodine’s. The contributions from particles with low energies, like Auger and internal conversion electrons should not be neglected, to assessment the absorbed dose in cellular level. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering was used to compare doses obtained by codes MCNP4C, EPOTRAN, EGS4 and by deterministic methods.