An analytic model to calculate voxel s-values for ¹⁷⁷Lu

Abstract Objective. 177Lu is one of the most employed isotopes in targeted radionuclide therapies and theranostics, and 3D internal dosimetry for such procedures has great importance. Voxel S-Values (VSVs) approach is widely used for this purpose, but VSVs are available for a limited number of voxel dimensions. The aim of this work is to develop an analytic model for the calculation of 177Lu-VSVs in any cubic voxelized geometry of practical interest. Approach. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations were implemented with the toolkit GAMOS to evaluate VSVs in voxelized geometries of soft tissue from a source of 177Lu homogeneously distributed in the central voxel. Nine geometric setups, containing 15 × 15 × 15 cubic voxels of sides l ranging from 2 mm to 6 mm, in steps of 0.5 mm, were considered. For each l, the VSVs computed as a function of the ‘normalized radius’, R n = R/l (with R = distance from the center of the source voxel), were fitted with a parametric function. The dependencies of the parameters as a function of l were then fitted with appropriate functions, in order to implement the model for deducing 177Lu-VSVs for any l within the aforementioned range. Main results. The MC-derived VSVs were satisfactorily compared with literature data for validation, and the VSVs computed with the analytic model agree with the MC ones within 2% for R n ≤ 2 and within 6% for R n > 2. Significance. The proposed model enables the easy and fast calculation, with a simple spreadsheet, of 177Lu-VSVs in any cubic voxelized geometry of practical interest, avoiding the necessity of implementing ad-hoc MC simulations to estimate VSVs for specific voxel dimensions not available in literature data.