New small-intestine modeling method for surface-based computational human phantoms.

When converting voxel phantoms to a surface format, the small intestine (SI), which is usually not accurately represented in a voxel phantom due to its complex and irregular shape on one hand and the limited voxel resolutions on the other, cannot be directly converted to a high-quality surface model. Currently, stylized pipe models are used instead, but they are strongly influenced by developer's subjectivity, resulting in unacceptable geometric and dosimetric inconsistencies. In this paper, we propose a new method for the construction of SI models based on the Monte Carlo approach. In the present study, the proposed method was tested by constructing the SI model for the polygon-mesh version of the ICRP reference male phantom currently under development. We believe that the new SI model is anatomically more realistic than the stylized SI models. Furthermore, our simulation results show that the new SI model, for both external and internal photon exposures, leads to dose values that are more similar to those of the original ICRP male voxel phantom than does the previously constructed stylized SI model.