A computational study into the use of polyacrylamide gel and A-150 plastic as brain tissue substitutes for boron...

A precise evaluation of the dosimetric performance of epithermal neutron beams designed for boron neutron capture theory of brain tumours requires the use of a phantom material that closely matches brain tissue. The aim of this study was to investigate how well polyacrylamide gel (or PAG) and A- 150 plastic performed as substitutes for brain tissue compared with standard phantom materials such as water and polymethyl-methacrylate (or PMMA). Thermal neutron fluence, photon dose and epithermal neutron dose distributions were calculated for the epithermal neutron beam available at the University of Birmingham. The results presented in this paper show that the PAG provides a good simulation of radiation transport in the brain with differences from the real brain of +9.4%, - 10.8% and +5.1% at a depth of 50 mm for thermal neutron fluence, gamma dose and epithermal neutron dose distributions respectively. The polyacrylamide gel presented is therefore a promising substitute for brain tissue that can, as a dosimeter, provide a three-dimensional map of the absorbed dose delivered by the epithermal neutron beam. However, this study does not investigate the agreement between doses derived from magnetic resonance and physical doses for such gels. A- 150 plastic was shown to be a better substitute for brain tissue than PMMA, with differences from brain of -1.9%, -12.4% and - 13.2% at a depth of 50 mm for thermal neutron fluence, gamma dose and epithermal neutron dose distributions respectively, against +21.1%, -16.2% and +19.2% for PMMA. A-150 plastic should therefore be the material of choice for solid phantoms.