Abstract
Abstract
A new analytical formalism, previously developed for estimating electron-absorbed fractions, was extended for estimating photon absorbed fractions in soft-tissue spheres, containing uniformly distributed photon-emitter. Analytical equations were formulated for calculating values of photon-absorbed fractions. The method involves a rescaling procedure with transformation of real biological sizes to unitless effective ones, combining information of photon energy, object’s size, and material. Rescaling was applied to large published datasets of photon absorbed fractions in soft-tissue spheres, computed with Monte Carlo codes. A new effect was demonstrated in which the rescaled data formed a single smooth ‘unified curve’ with saturation. The unified curve for photon absorbed fractions was described analytically, using simple equations without fitting parameters. The new method was tested for a wide range of spheres—from 1 mg up to 1000 kg, and wide range of photon energies—from 0.02 up to 5 MeV. For larger spheres, a close agreement between analytical values and Monte Carlo datasets was demonstrated. For small biovolumes, analytical equations predict higher values than available Monte Carlo data. The unified formalism is now available for direct calculating radiation absorbed fractions in soft-tissue spherical organs and organisms without Monte Carlo codes.