Background: Recent pre-clinical and clinical studies indicate that irradiation in the dose range of 15 to 30 Gy can reduce rate of restenosis in patients who have undergone an angioplasty. The use of filled balloon with radioactive solution was proposed as one of the possible intravascular irradiation techniques. Materials and Methods: The Monte Carlo N-particle Transport Code (MCNP4b) was used...

Detection peculiarities of an un-cooled (room temperature) 8×8 pixel array designed to image broadband THz radiation were investigated. Each pixel consists of a thin conductive film absorber on a dielectric membrane with thermopile temperature readout. It was designed and tested for four combinations of two different types of absorber and thermopile materials. The photo-response profile, determ...

A solid plastic phantom has been developed with optical properties that closely match those of human breast tissue at near-IR wavelengths. The phantom is a 54-mm-thick slab containing four small cylinders of contrasting scatter and absorption. A detailed description of the phantom is followed by an account of an attempt to image the phantom by a time-resolved imaging technique. Images generated...

A product available commercially for making dental impressions, Jeltrate Plus, was evaluated as a tissue equivalent bolus material. Jeltrate Plus was found to be tissue equivalent in 6 and 15 MV photon energy beams and 6, 12, and 20 MeV electron energy beams. As a first step, different preparations for making the bolus material were investigated and an optimal mixture was determined to be two p...

A recipe is presented for the manufacture of highly compressible phantoms for diffuse optical tomography. The recipe is based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) slime, a viscoelastic fluid which readily deforms under moderate pressure. Scattering particles and absorbing compounds can be added to provide a uniform material with stable and reproducible optical properties. A linear relationship between th...

Effects on human health from the complex radiation environment in deep space have not been measured and can only be simulated here on Earth using experimental systems and beams of radiations produced by accelerators, usually one beam at a time. This makes it particularly important to develop instruments that can be used on deep-space missions to measure quantities that are known to be relatable...

BACKGROUND In radiation therapy, the principal dosimetric quantity of interest is the absorbed dose to water. Therefore, a dose conversion to dose to water is required for dose deposited by ion beams in other media. This is in particular necessary for dose measurements in plastic phantoms for increased positioning accuracy, graphite calorimetry being developed as a primary standard for dose to ...

Biomedical field is constantly requesting for new biomaterials, with innovative properties. Natural polymers appear as materials of election for this goal due to their biocompatibility and biodegradability. In particular, materials found in marine environment are of great interest since the chemical and biological diversity found in this environment is almost uncountable and continuously growin...