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Estimation of dose enhancement for inhomogeneous distribution of nanoparticles: A Monte Carlo study

Abolaban, Fouad, Taha, Eslam, Alhawsawi, Abdulsalam, Djouider, Fathi, Banoqitah, Essam and Nisbet, Andrew 2021. Estimation of dose enhancement for inhomogeneous distribution of nanoparticles: A Monte Carlo study. Applied Sciences 11 (11) , 4900. 10.3390/app11114900

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Abstract

High atomic number nanoparticles are of increasing interest in radiotherapy due to their significant positive impact on the local dose applied to the treatment site. In this work, three types of metal nanoparticles were utilized to investigate their dose enhancement based on the GATE Monte Carlo simulation tool. Gold, gadolinium, and silver were implanted at three different concentrations to a 1 cm radius sphere to mimic a cancerous tumor inside a 10 × 10 × 30 cm3 water phantom. The innermost layer of the tumor represents a necrotic region, where the metal nanoparticles uptake is assumed to be zero, arising from hypoxic conditions. The nanoparticles were defined using the mixture technique, where nanoparticles are added to the chemical composition of the tumor. A directional 2 × 2 cm2 monoenergetic photon beam was used with several energies ranging from 50 keV to 4000 keV. The dose enhancement factor (DEF) was measured for all three metal nanoparticles under all beam energies. The maximum DEF was ~7 for silver nanoparticles with the 50 keV beam energy at the highest nanoparticle concentration of 30 mg/g of water. Gold followed the same trend as it registered the highest DEF at the 50 keV beam energy with the highest concentration of nanoparticles at 30 mg/g, while gadolinium registered the highest at 100 keV.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Published Online
Status: Published
Schools: Schools > Engineering
Publisher: MDPI
ISSN: 2076-3417
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 4 February 2026
Date of Acceptance: 24 May 2021
Last Modified: 04 Feb 2026 16:43
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/184433

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