ABSTRACT
Anthropomorphic computational phantoms used for dose calculations in nuclear medicine for the past 30 years have used the stylized anatomical computational phantoms that were originally developed for the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) committee of the Society of Nuclear Medicine in 1960s.1 Figure 13.1 illustrates the exterior and cutaway views of the original MIRD stylized adult male computational phantoms. These computational phantoms were de ned in three sections: an elliptical cylinder representing the arm, torso, and hips; a truncated elliptical cone representing the legs and feet; and an elliptical cylinder representing the head and neck. A number of organs and tissues were mathematically de ned as occupying nite spaces within the whole body space, and were comprised of three types of tissue: “soft tissue,” bone, and lung. The mathematical descriptions of the organs were formulated based on descriptive and schematic materials from general anatomy references. Later improvements led to a series of “family” stylized computational phantoms, which include both genders at several ages.2 This series of stylized computational phantoms, along with a set of stylized computational phantoms representing the pregnant female at four stages of gestation,3 were used in the MIRDOSE4 and OLINDA/EXM 1.05 personal computer codes to facilitate calculation of standardized internal dose calculations. See Chapter 11 for further discussion of the pregnant female computational phantoms, including the recent development of realistic computational phantoms to replace those of [3].
