Application for internal dosimetry using biokinetic distribution of photons based on nuclear medicine images*

OBJECTIVE This article presents a way to obtain estimates of dose in patients submitted to radiotherapy with basis on the analysis of regions of interest on nuclear medicine images. MATERIALS AND METHODS A software called DoRadIo (Dosimetria das Radiações Ionizantes [Ionizing Radiation Dosimetry]) was developed to receive information about source organs and target organs, generating graphical and numerical results. The nuclear medicine images utilized in the present study were obtained from catalogs provided by medical physicists. The simulations were performed with computational exposure models consisting of voxel phantoms coupled with the Monte Carlo EGSnrc code. The software was developed with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack and the project template Windows Presentation Foundation for C# programming language. RESULTS With the mentioned tools, the authors obtained the file for optimization of Monte Carlo simulations using the EGSnrc; organization and compaction of dosimetry results with all radioactive sources; selection of regions of interest; evaluation of grayscale intensity in regions of interest; the file of weighted sources; and, finally, all the charts and numerical results. CONCLUSION The user interface may be adapted for use in clinical nuclear medicine as a computer-aided tool to estimate the administered activity.