Neutron dose coefficients for local skin.

A draft report by the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) Report Committee 26 (RC26) will recommend alternative definitions of the operational quantities that are better estimators of radiation protection quantities. Dose coefficients for use with physical field quantities-fluence and, for photons, air kerma-are given for various particle types over a broad energy range. For the skin dosimetry, several changes are of particular interest. Specifically, the use of absorbed dose instead of dose equivalent has been selected as the operational quantity since deterministic effects are of primary interest in the skin. In addition, newly recommended phantoms are specified for computing the operational dose coefficients. The report also addresses computational approaches such as tally volumes, depths, source areas, and rotational angles. In this work, dose coefficients calculated for local skin in support of the ICRU report are presented. Energy-dependent dose coefficients were calculated in phantoms specified for the trunk (slab), the ankle or wrist (pillar), and the finger (rod). The phantom specifications in this work were taken directly from the draft report. Full transport of secondary charged particles from neutron interactions was performed and an analysis of the depth-dose profiles in the slab phantom is presented, The last complete set of neutron dose coefficients for the extremities was published more than 25 years ago. Given the limited data available, it is difficult for many facilities to obtain clear guidance on how monitoring should be performed and how dosimeters should be calibrated so spectra from commonly encountered neutron sources were used to generate source-specific dose coefficients in each of the phantoms. Both energy-dependent and source-specific dose coefficients are provided for rotational angles up to 180 degrees for the rod and pillar phantoms and up to 75 degrees for the slab phantom.