Development of a Voxel-based Chinese Reference Female Phantom from Color Photographs for Radiation Dosimetry Applications

The objective of this study was to develop a Voxel-based Chinese Reference female Phantom (VCRP-woman) from high-resolution color photographs acquired from an adult female cadaver. Forty-six organs/tissues, including all radiosensitive organs/tissues specified in the 2007 recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), were either segmented manually or subjected to semi-automatic segmentation as seen in color photographs of the unadjusted female. A C++ program was developed to adjust the masses of the organs/tissues to values applicable to the Chinese Reference adult female. The resulting VCRP-woman consists of more than 106 million voxels, each with dimensions of 1.03 mm × 1.03 mm × 1.95 mm. Organ absorbed dose and effective dose conversion coefficients for monoenergetic photons from 0.015-10 MeV were calculated for several reference irradiation geometries (anterior-posterior, posterior-anterior, left-lateral, rotational, and isotropic) by Monte Carlo radiation transport. The results for the VCRP-woman were compared to those of the original (or unadjusted) female voxel phantom as well as the ICRP Publication 110 adult reference female computational phantom.