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Members of the public visiting hospitalized patients undergoing nuclear medicine procedures or brachytherapy are exposed to radiation emanating from the patient. The radiation protection staff at the hospital is responsible for ensuring that the doses to these visitors are kept as low as is reasonably achievable and are maintained below applicable regulatory limits. These limits are normally expressed in terms of the effective dose to the visitor. Direct measurement of the effective dose, however, is not feasible, and the use of a quantity that provides a reasonable estimate, referred to as a surrogate, is required. This study used Monte Carlo radiation transport calculations to examine the feasibility of using bedside survey results, in units of roentgens per hour, as a surrogate for estimating the effective dose to a person who may be present at the survey location. The Monte Carlo code used in this work was MCNP Version 5. In these calculations, both the patient and the visitor were modeled using modified Medical Internal Radiation Dose anthropomorphic phantoms. Radioactive material that emitted monoenergetic photons was located in several of the patient's organs in turn, and the bedside exposure rates and the effective doses at the same location were calculated. The calculations were repeated for several visitor locations, both at bedside along the length of the bed, and at increasing distances from the bed. The ratios of the exposure rates to the effective dose rates at each location gave an indication of the utility of the exposure rate measurements in providing a reasonable estimate of the effective dose. The results indicated that the survey data provided estimates of the effective dose within recommended accuracy for many expo- sure situations, but underestimated the effective dose to the visitor for other situations, especially locations close to bedside and for lower energy radiations. Use of appropriate correction factors based on this work could improve the utility of the survey data for the underestimated situations, and the exposure rate data could still be used to estimate the dose to a visitor within recommended accuracy, provided the estimated dose does not approach too closely to the applicable limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of a dose calculation algorithm, using the readings of multiple dosimeters, to accurately assess the effective dose under different photon irradiation conditions was assessed using computer simulation. The algorithm was that described in American National Standards Institute publication N13.41. Monte Carlo calculations with an anthropomorphic humanoid phantom were used to calculate the effective doses and also the expected readings of the multiple dosimeters. The irradiation geometries considered included a point source placed at several locations at a distance of 100 cm in front of the phantom, as well as an anterior-posterior plane parallel beam with a lead shield interposed between the phantom and the source. The point source energies considered were 0.05, 0.6, and 2 MeV, and the beam energy was varied between 0.03 and 10 MeV. Also considered were the estimates of effective dose based on the highest reading of the multiple dosimeters, apractice that is currently used in many work places. The results showed that use of the algorithm resulted in substantial improvements inthe ability to accurately estimate effective dose. However, the results also showed that the improvements in accuracy were achievable only by using a calibration factor for the dosimetry that is different from the one obtained in current dosimetry calibration practices, and that without the use of this factor, the algorithm tended to underestimate the effective dose for nearly all the irradiation geometries considered. In addition, it appeared that this calibration factor is not constant but varies with irradiation conditions. There thus appearsto be a problem of proper dosimetry calibration for use with the algorithm. This work considered only anterior posterior irradiations, and additional work is needed to assess the performance of the algorithm in other non-uniform irradiation geometries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]