Some properties of photon scattering in water phantoms in diagnostic radiology

Monte Carlo simulation was applied to study the histories of photon interactions in a soft-tissue-equivalent medium under diagnostic imaging conditions. We examined the dependence on incident x-ray energy and phantom thickness of the basic properties of photon scattering, including the probabilities of occurrence of the various interaction processes, and the frequency distributions of scattering events. We investigated the properties of scattered radiation for monoenergetic incident x rays, which provide a basis for deriving the physical properties of scattered radiation for any polyenergetic incident beam. We also included four incident x-ray beams with broad spectra; these represented the incident x rays typically used for diagnostic imaging.