Radiation interaction parameters for blood samples of breast cancer patients: an MCNP study

The main goal of this study was to determine radiation interaction parameters such as mass attenuation coefficients, effective atomic numbers, and effective electron densities depending on element concentrations (Na, K, Cu, Zn, Al, Ca, Mg Cr, Fe, Se) in blood samples of patients with breast cancer. Eighty blood samples were collected and analyzed in this study (40 from breast cancer patients and 40 from healthy patients). The determination of element concentrations of the samples was performed with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) after which the element concentrations were normalized to percentage. Mass attenuation coefficients were calculated by Monte Carlo simulation method. In addition, effective atomic numbers and effective electron density values of the blood samples were calculated with the ZXCOM program. One of the most important results of this study is that differences in radiation interaction parameters between the two groups were observed. More specifically, the mass attenuation coefficients of the healthy group's blood samples were higher than those of the cancerous group at photon energies of 50 keV, 100 keV, 250 keV and 500 keV, while they were lower at 1 MeV. All the MCNP results were consistent with the results obtained from ZXCOM. As the main result of this study it is concluded that photon atomic parameters such as mass attenuation coefficient, effective atomic number and electron density may be considered in cancer diagnosis or treatment modalities.