Virtual Igor: an analytical phantom for the simulation of the Saint Petersburg brick phantom in arbitrary layouts in MCNP.

A computer code called Virtual Igor is presented. The code generates an analytical representation of the Saint Petersburg brick phantom family (Igor, Olga, Irina), which is frequently used for the calibration of whole-body counters, in arbitrary user-defined layouts for the use in the Monte-Carlo radiation transport code MCNP. The computer code reads a file in the ldraw format, which can easily be produced by simple freeware software with graphical user interfaces and which contains the types and coordinates of the bricks. Ldraw files with the canonical layouts of the brick phantom are provided with Virtual Igor. The code determines the positions of (2.75 cm) segments of the bricks, where 2.75 cm is the smallest length in the layout and, therefore, represents the spacing of the segment lattice. Each segment contains the exact geometry of the respective part of the brick, using cuboid and cylindrical surfaces. The user can define which rod source drill holes of which bricks contain the rod-type radionuclide sources. The method facilitates the comparison of different layouts of the Saint Petersburg brick phantom with each other and with anthropomorphic computational phantoms.