RSICC CODE PACKAGE DLC-256

 

1.             NAME AND TITLE

                                VIP-Man: Computational Phantom.

                               

2.             CONTRIBUTOR

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.

 

3.             CODING LANGUAGE AND COMPUTERS

VIP-man is a MCNP/MCNPX input file, which can be read in a .txt environment (D00256MNYCP00).

 

4.             NATURE OF PROBLEM SOLVED

Risk to the human body due to radiation exposure can be assessed by ICRP conversion factors, which rely on the accuracy of virtual human phantoms to portray the most precise results. VIP-Man phantom allows for the ability to investigate subtle dose variations in relatively small structures from various charged particles.

 

5.             METHOD OF SOLUTION

VIP-Man (vp-n.inp) is a voxel phantom (also called tomographic phantom) that represents the entire body of a human.  The phantom was developed from segmented cadaver images originally obtained in the Visible Human Project. The phantom was implemented in MCNP/MCNPX codes at a 4mm x 4mm x 4mm voxel size.  The input deck allows for the use of MCNP/MCNPX codes to model the transport of photons, electrons, and neutrons through an anatomically realistic adult male for radiation protection, imaging and therapy applications.  The phantom geometry can also be extracted from the input file for other purposes such as visualization.

 

6.             RESTRICTIONS OR LIMITATIONS

A user should not modify or redistribute the VIP-Man phantom without the knowledge of the original developer, Professor X. George Xu, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Publications associated with this phantom should bear an appropriate reference to the paper (Xu, et al, 2000) and acknowledgement of this tool shared through RSICC.

 

7.             TYPICAL RUNNING TIME

                                About one hour for one million particles depending on the computer hardware.

 

8.             COMPUTER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

Minimum hardware: 450-MHz Pentium II with 512 MB RAM (the same requirements as for running MCNP/MCNPX codes).

 

9.             COMPUTER SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

                                The same requirements as for running MCNP/MCNPX codes.

 

10.          REFERENCES

                a) Documentation included in package:

                                Descriptive document – VIP-Man.

 

                b) Background reference:

Xu, X.G., Chao, T.C. and Bozkurt, A. (2000) VIP-MAN: An Image-Based Whole-Body Adult Male Model Constructed From Color Photographs of The Visible Human Project for Multi-Particle Monte Carlo Calculations, Health Physics, vol. 78, no. 5, May, pp. 476-86.

11.          CONTENTS OF CODE PACKAGE

                                The package includes input file and documentation.

 

12.          DATE OF ABSTRACT

                                August 2012.

                               

KEYWORDS:             MCNP FORMAT, MONTE CARLO, PHANTOM