Measurement of Total Body Radioactivity in Man. An Evaluation of Detector Geometries with Applications in Radiation Protection and Nuclear Medicine

摘要

Techniques for the determination of whole-body radioactivity in man using uncollimated NaI(Tl) detectors have been studied. Geometrical effects and photon attenuation effects due to the different shapes of humans as well as due to varying in-vivo radioactivity distributions have been evaluated particularly for scanning-bed geometries and the chair geometry. Theoretically it is shown that the attenuation effects are generally dominating, for full-energy-peak pulse-range methods. For the application in radiation protection a cheap and simple chair-geometry unit has been constructed and used at various places distantly from the home-laboratory, for studies of body activity of Cs-137 in northern Sweden. High body activities were found particularly in reindeer-breeding Lapps. The elimination rate of Cs-137 in man was studied in the stationary whole-body counter in Lund as well as with the field-system. For the study of the performances at low and high photon energies clinical applications of methods for gastro-intestinal absorption of vitamin B12 (Co-57; 122 keV) and total body potassium determination (K-40; 1.46 MeV, K-42; 1.52 MeV) have been evaluated. Theoretical and experimental results as well as experiences of applications in radiation protection and medicine show that the scanning-bed geometry effectively evens out redistributional effects. For optimum results, however, scatt. (Atomindex citation 13:696782)