Evaluation of specific activity and decay characteristics of radionuclides in cancer treatment

Abstract

Radiation therapy is a treatment modality of cancer. This treatment technique always needs to be executed very carefully, by considering lots of Dosimetric properties and quantities. Internal beam radiation therapy which is also known as brachytherapy requires extra degree of such practices for being more complex. Radioactive elements are used as energy source so that they can deposit the required energy to unwanted tumor and ultimately kill the DNA of tumorous cells. In this work various properties of the radioactive elements have been evaluated. The analysis was extended to know the impact of such properties and quantities. The elements under consideration were radium-226, radon-222, Cobalt-60, and Cesium-137. The change in the specific activity which was caused by the radioactive decay found to decrease with time, but this decrease vary in different elements for having various basic physical properties.