Calibration of a 241Am wound-monitoring system using Monte Carlo techniques

Monte Carlo techniques have been used to establish calibration factors and to predict gamma spectra for well-defined measurements. These techniques are routinely used to predict shielding requirements and critical specifications. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is researching the feasibility of using Monte Carlo techniques to establish calibration factors for in vivo measurement systems. A pilot study was conducted to demonstrate the use of the Monte Carlo technique to calibrate in vivo measurement systems, to predict the efficiency of a wound measurement system and compare the predicted efficiency with the measured efficiency, and to investigate the effects of the source geometry and the detector size on the measured efficiency. Results of this study demonstrate good agreement between the Monte-Carlo-predicted efficiency and the measured efficiency for a wound calibration phantom. The effects of the source geometry and the detector size tend to conform to the physical processes that govern the measurement process. These results demonstrate that the Monte Carlo technique accurately predicts the in vivo measurement efficiency if the characteristics of the attenuating material and the Monte Carlo source geometry are properly established.