Abstract
Arthritis is one of the most common epidemic diseases in the world. Multiple treatment approaches will provide appropriate disease control rate and improve the quality of patient’s life. The goal of our study is to evaluate the feasibility of Boron Neutron Capture Synovectomy by Tsing Hua Opening-pool Reactor. Furthermore, we established the optimal BNCS treatment parameters, such as putting the reflectors around the inflamed joint and using the patient’s treatment collimator to reduce the beam’s field size. Using the THOR epithermal beam we expect that BNCS could provide an alternative treatment of arthritis in Taiwan. In this study, we use the MCNP5 to model neutron beam interaction with knee and finger phantom. The phantom was established according to the structure of human joints. The composition of tissues was based on ICRU Report No.46., including bone, articular cartilage, synovial fluid, synovium, joint capsule, muscle and skin. Since the blood flow is increased in inflamed synovium, we assumed it is similar to the blood tissue. The Figure of merits (FOMs) such as total treatment time, total maximum skin dose and synovium to bone treatment ratio were used to evaluate the effect of the treatment parameters. Treatment parameters vary with joint size. The optimum treatment condition for different joint size can be achieved by using the opposed parallel beam, placing the inflamed joint near the source, and adding suitable reflectors. It is found that the quality and overall clinical efficacy of THOR epithermal beam for BNCS is more suitable and better than the beam produced by accelerator.