| خلاصه مقاله | Introduction: Exposure to high doses of ionizing radiations may lead to many biological effects; thus, sufficient protection against ionizing radiations is necessary in radiation therapy. In the past years, concrete has been widely used as a conventional shielding material in radiation therapy. Recently, due to the development of nanotechnology, different nanoparticles have been investigated as shielding materials used in radiotherapy. The purpose of this review is to survey the use of nanoparticles for shielding applications in radiotherapy.
Materials and methods: The articles published during 2007-2020 were identified via searching in databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus using keywords including nano shield, radiotherapy, shielding materials and radiation protection. After the selection of the related studies, the required data were extracted and summarized.
Results: In total, 8 articles were selected from the identified articles and reviewed. Two of these articles were experimental studies and the rest were done using Monte Carlo modeling and simulations. Different types of the nanoparticles were investigated in these studies including iron (III) oxide, boron carbide, tungsten trioxide, lead (II) oxide, bismuth, bismuth (III) oxide, bismuth borates and boronium. These nanoparticles were mixed with various matrices, such as concrete, silicone rubber and epoxy resin. Compared to ordinary concrete, all the nanomaterials showed enhanced attenuation properties for all studied photon energies.
Conclusion: According to the obtained results, there is a great potential for application of nanomaterials as ionizing radiation shield in radiotherapy. |