Characteristics of lead glass for radiation protectionpurposes: A Monte Carlo study

Background: lead glass has a wide variety of applications in radiationprotection. this study aims to investigate some characteristics of lead glasssuch as the γ-ray energy-dependent mass and linear attenuation coefficients,the half-value layer thickness, and the absorbed dose distribution for specificenergy. materials and methods: the attenuation parameters of different leadglass types against high-energy photons (0.2-3 mev) of gamma rays havebeen calculated by the monte carlo technique and a deterministic method.besides, the depth dose distribution inside the volume of two cubic lead glasssamples was calculated by two monte carlo-based computer codes, forgamma rays of 300 kev. in each part of the study, the results of the twomethods have been compared. results: increasing the pb concentration(weight in %) by 1% in the lead glass causes a 1.6%-3% increase in the linearattenuation coefficient, depending on the energy. however, the massattenuation coefficient does not show significant variation for different typesof lead glass, especially for the energies higher than 400 kev. moreover,almost half of the total dose from 300 kev photons will be absorbed in thefirst 3.5 mm of the sample’s thickness. conclusion: results indicate that themonte carlo technique is as reliable as the deterministic methods forcalculating the attenuation characteristics of the lead glass. the provided datain this investigation can be useful for radiation protection purposes, especiallyin the case of selecting the lead glass type and dimension based on a specificapplication.