A comprehensive study for mass attenuation coefficients of different parts of the human body through Monte Carlo methods

Abstract

The gamma-ray mass attenuation coefficients of blood, bone, lung, eye lens, adipose, tissue, muscle, brain and skin were calculated at different energies (60, 80, 150, 400, 500, 600, 1000, 1250, 1500, and 2000 keV) by various theoretical methods such as FLUKA, GEANT4 Monte Carlo (MC) methods and XCOM program in this work. Calculated coefficients were also compared with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) values. Obtained results were highly in accordance with each other and NIST values. Our results showed that FLUKA was quite convenient in comparison to GEANT4 in the calculation of the mass attenuation coefficients of the used human body samples for low-energy photons (60, 80, and 150 keV) when compared with the NIST values.