Assessment of the internal dose of 241Am in bone by in vivo measurements of activity deposited in knee

Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2007;127(1-4):531-4. doi: 10.1093/rpd/ncm411. Epub 2007 Sep 14.

Abstract

In case of chronic exposure or long time after an acute intake of (241)Am as a consequence of an incident, the assessment of internal dose might be realised by estimating the total activity content of this element in the skeleton. For this purpose, a new methodology has been developed at the Whole Body Counting Laboratory of CIEMAT. In vivo measurements of this bone-seeker radionuclide in the knee are performed using four low energy germanium detectors inside a shielded room. The sensitivity study of this technique resulted in a minimum detectable activity of 7 Bq, for a counting time of 1800 s. Extrapolation to the total activity in the bone has been carried out by taking into account that the bone content of the knee calibration phantom is equivalent to 10.7% of the whole skeleton mass. The results of in vivo measurements of population and the procedure for internal dose evaluation are presented here.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • Americium / analysis*
  • Americium / pharmacokinetics*
  • Biological Assay / methods*
  • Body Burden
  • Computer Simulation
  • Environmental Exposure / analysis*
  • Humans
  • Knee Joint / metabolism*
  • Models, Biological*
  • Radiometry / methods*
  • Relative Biological Effectiveness

Substances

  • Americium