Next Generation of International Reference Computational Human Phantoms for Radiological Protection Dosimetry

par Yeon Soo YEOM (Department of Radiation Convergence Engineering, Yonsei University, South Korea)

vendredi 12 juin 2026, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Paris

Computational human phantoms, coupled with Monte Carlo radiation transport simulation, have played a central role in improving the dosimetry system of radiological protection. In the current general recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the adult voxel-type reference computational phantoms (VRCPs) released in ICRP Publication 110 (2009) and the pediatric VRCPs released in ICRP Publication 143 (2020) have been used for the computation of protection quantities such as effective dose. The VRCPs were constructed based on computed tomography (CT) images of patients and therefore can describe the real anatomy of human body in contrast to the older-type stylized phantoms, enhancing the reliability of the dose calculations. Nevertheless, the VRCPs still have anatomical and dosimetrical limitations due mainly to the finite voxel resolutions on a millimeter scale. Resultantly, the micron-scale radiosensitive target layers in the skin, urinary bladder, and alimentary and respiratory tract systems could not be defined in the VRCPs, inducting significant errors in dose calculations to those organs/tissues. Acknowledging the limitations of the VRCPs and the cutting-edge phantom technology based on tetrahedral mesh, ICRP Task Group 103 have developed new mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs). The adult and pediatric MRCPs, released in ICRP Publication 145 (2020) and 156 (2024) respectively, are the tetrahedral mesh counterparts of the adult and pediatric VRCPs, but eliminate the limitations of the voxel phantoms due to the finite voxel resolutions. Very recently, the development of the pregnant-female MRCPs have been completed as the first pregnant-female reference phantoms, which are expected to be officially released in 2026. The MRCPs as the next generation of the ICRP reference phantoms will be used for the calculation of new dose coefficients for the next general recommendations.