Object Oriented Design of Anthropomorphic Phantoms and Geant4-based Implementations

Various models of anthropomorphic phantoms have been developed in the past decades for usage in Monte Carlo simulation for radiation protection and other medical physics applications; they adopt two alternative approaches, either modelling the body components through analytical geometrical representations or through voxelized geometries. An original system has been developed associated with the use of the Geant4 simulation toolkit. It exploits Geant4 advanced capabilities to model geometrical components, and the object oriented technology to provide a variety of models of the human body usable in a simulation application. The flexible software design allows the creation of both analytical and voxel phantoms. The system allows the creation of phantoms of different sex and age; phantoms based on established models are provided, as well as the option for the user to assemble customized phantoms.