What is the half life of Cobalt 60?
Co-60 is used medically for radiation therapy as implants and as an external source of radiation exposure. It is used industrially in leveling gauges and to x-ray welding seams and other structural elements to detect flaws. Co-60 also is used for food irradiation, a sterilization process.
How does cobalt affect the body?
Abstract. The advances in modern radiation therapy with techniques such as intensity-modulated radiation therapy and image-guided radiation therapy (IMRT and IGRT) have been limited almost exclusively to linear accelerators. Investigations of modern Cobalt-60 (Co-60) radiation delivery in the context of IMRT and IGRT have been very sparse, and have been limited mainly to …
What type of radiation is Cobalt 60?
Cobalt 60 (60 Co) is often the ideal mode of radiation for treating laryngeal cancer. For primary treatment of laryngeal cancer, 60 Co allows adequate dosing of the superficial tissues. Historically, great concern has been expressed that 6-MV photons have too large a buildup region and can potentially underdose superficial tissues.
Is Cobalt 60 radioactive?
Cobalt therapy or cobalt-60 therapy is the medical use of gamma rays from the radioisotope cobalt-60 to treat conditions such as cancer. Cobalt 60 is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2714 years. It is produced artificially in nuclear reactors. Subject: General Science. Exam Prep: AIEEE , Bank Exams , CAT , GATE.
Why is Cobalt-60 used to treat cancer?
The cobalt-60 system is designed to deliver radiation in the shape of a sphere. To cover irregularly shaped tumors, several of these radiation spheres are combined to best mimic the tumor's shape.
How successful is Cobalt-60 for cancer?
Cobalt-60 technology is currently used to treat roughly 70 per cent of the world's cancer cases treated by radiation. LHSC's last Cobalt treatment was delivered in 2004.Oct 27, 2011
What are the benefits of cobalt-60?
The advantages of Co/sup 60/ therapy over conventional x-ray therapy, stemming from the fact that in the lst instance energy absorption within the tissues is by the Compton effect and in the 2nd case by the photoelectric effect, are: (1) increased skin tolerance, (2) reduced bone absorption, (3) increase in depth dose, ...Dec 31, 1969
What does cobalt-60 do in radiation therapy?
What is it used for? Co-60 is used medically for radiation therapy as implants and as an external source of radiation exposure. It is used industrially in leveling gauges and to x-ray welding seams and other structural elements to detect flaws. Co-60 also is used for food irradiation, a sterilization process.
Why is cobalt-60 no longer used?
Since cobalt-60 has a short half-life, there is no significant presence of the isotope in the general environment at this time. Exposures have occurred as a result of improper disposal of medical radiation sources and the accidental melting of cobalt-60 sources by metal recycling facilities.
What is cobalt used for?
Cobalt is also used to make airbags in automobiles; catalysts for the petroleum and chemical industries; cemented carbides (also called hardmetals) and diamond tools; corrosion- and wear-resistant alloys; drying agents for paints, varnishes, and inks; dyes and pigments; ground coats for porcelain enamels; high-speed ...
What is cobalt used for in medicine?
Cobalt-60 is used in the inspection of materials to reveal internal structure, flaws, or foreign objects and in the sterilization of food. In medicine, it is used to treat cancer and to sterilize medical equipment.
Is cobalt-60 used in brachytherapy?
The well established and clinically proven isotope for all HDR brachytherapy treatments. Cobalt-60 sources are available for Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG afterloaders. In 1962, Walstam [1] introduced the first concept of a remote afterloader equipped with Co-60.
What radioactive isotope is used as an internal treatment for thyroid cancers?
Your thyroid gland absorbs nearly all of the iodine in your body. Because of this, radioactive iodine (RAI, also called I-131) can be used to treat thyroid cancer.Mar 14, 2019
When was cobalt 60 used?
Beginning in the 1950s, cobalt-60 was widely used in external beam radiotherapy (teletherapy) machines, which produced a beam of gamma rays which was directed into the patient's body to kill tumor tissue.
What was the only radiation source used for teletherapy?
Before the development of medical linear accelerators in the 1970s, the only artificial radiation source used for teletherapy was the x-ray tube. Researchers found ordinary x-ray tubes, which used voltages of 50-150 keV, could treat superficial tumors, but did not have the energy to reach tumors deep in the body.
Is cobalt still used?
Cobalt treatment still has a useful role to play in certain applications and is still in widespread use worldwide, since the machinery is relatively reliable and simple to maintain compared to the modern linear accelerator .
What is cobalt 60 used for?
Industrial cobalt-60 irradiators are primarily used for food or phytosanitary applications and medical device sterilization. They operate in either continuous or, less commonly, in a large batch mode, and products to be irradiated come in pallets or tote boxes.
How long does cobalt 60 last?
Cobalt-60 decays continuously. The time taken to lose 50% of its initial activity, i.e., its half-life, is 5.26 years. Usually 10% of the cobalt-60 is replenished annually.
What is the energy of 137Cs?
60Co produces gamma rays with energies of 1.173 and 1.332MeV and has a half-life of 5.27 years, whereas 137Cs produces gamma rays with an energy of 0.662MeV and has a longer half-life of 30.1 years.
How is Cobalt-60 produced?
Cobalt-60 is produced by neutron bombardment of stable cobalt in a nuclear reactor . Small nickel-plated slugs of the radioactive metal are loaded into a sealed alloy cylinder typically 10 × 450 mm and doubly encapsulated in a corrosion-resistant steel pencil. An array of such pencils is built into a rack typically 1–2 m 2.
What is the most widely used source of gamma radiation?
Cobalt-60 (60Co) and caesium-137 ( 137 Cs) are the most widely used sources of gamma radiation. 60 Co produces gamma rays with energies of 1.173 and 1.332 MeV and has a half-life of 5.27 years, whereas 137 Cs produces gamma rays with an energy of 0.662 MeV and has a longer half-life of 30.1 years. For both isotopes, the gamma rays energies are not high enough to induce radioactivity in the irradiated products, which would otherwise be a serious disadvantage to a sterilisation process. In industrial practice, the use of 137 Cs has been limited to small self-contained, dry storage irradiators used primarily for the irradiation of blood and for insect sterilisation.
What is 137 Cs used for?
In industrial practice, the use of 137 Cs has been limited to small self-contained, dry storage irradiators used primarily for the irradiation of blood and for insect sterilisation. In principle, X-rays may also be used for sterilisation.
What is 60 Co?
Historically, 60 Co was one of the first radionuclides used in eye plaques; there were some known and documented disadvantages. The 60 Co does not come in a small seedlike form, but rather as a plaque, sealed in platinum, shaped to conform to the sclera ( Chiu-Tsao et al., 1986 ).