INDIRECT MEASUREMENT OF RADIATION DOSE RATE FROM BRACHYTHERAPY 125 IODINE SEEDS BY NUMERICAL METHOD: PRELIMINARY COMPARISONS WITH ANALYTICAL CALCULATIONS

摘要

Brachytherapy, using radioactive iodine seeds, is a very important and efficient process of cancer treatment. These seeds are small sealed tubes of titanium, 4,50mm long, with the radioactive material inside. The amount of radiation to be imparted on a tumor has to be precisely evaluated, so any calculation process is welcome, beside the normative ones. In this work it is shown a numerical method to compute the exposure rate in the vicinity of the seed, and the results are compared with analytical calculations, in order to make a preliminary evaluation of the method.