Construction of a computed tomographic phantom for a Japanese male adult and dose calculation system.

Computational human phantoms have been widely used to estimate organ doses and other dosimetric quantities related to the human body where direct measurements are difficult to perform. In recent years, voxel phantoms (voxel = volume element) based on computed tomographic (CT) data of real persons have been constructed which provide a realistic description of the human anatomy. A CT phantom of a Japanese male adult with an average body size was developed as the first Asian voxel phantom. The segmented phantom consists of more than 100 regions enabling the calculation of doses for various parts of the body. The bone marrow distribution was precisely modelled according to the CT values. The EGS4 Monte Carlo transport code was combined with the phantom to calculate organ doses for external exposure due to photons and electrons up to 1 TeV. The calculated organ doses were compared with respective data using MIRD-type mathematical phantoms. In some cases, significant discrepancies in doses were observed, demonstrating the necessity of sophisticated models for accurate dose calculations.