Spinal cord injury (SCI) occurs as a result of damage to neurons in the spinal cord, which causes an interruption of neural signal conduction along the axonal tracts. SCI can result in complete or partial paralysis. Several studies have demonstrated that photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) has the ability to repair nerves and enhance functionality. PBMT is also known to present a biphasic dose-response pattern. Various PBMT research studies on contusion spinal cord injuries in rats have applied a fixed fluence onto the rats’ skin during the study period without considering the rats’ weight, which can lead to a reduction of the delivered fluence delivered to the SCI site. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to evaluate whether the bodyweight of the rat model, as well as the irradiation parameter, will in fact affect the fluence delivered to the SCI site. The study employed four computational rat models of the same age (11 weeks) and four different weights (250, 270, 290, and 310 g) as well as different irradiation parameters (3 wavelengths ×15 beam diameters × 2 beam shapes) to study their effect on the fluence delivered to the SCI site using Monte Carlo simulation. As the rat’s weight during the study period decreased, more fluence was delivered to the SCI site. Our results showed that the percentage increase of the fluence delivered to the SCI site was highest for the 660 nm large gaussian beam when compared with other parameters. We found that the irradiation parameters and the rats’ weight strongly influenced the dosage delivered to the SCI site in the rat. Therefore, researchers should consider the fluence delivered to the injury site instead of onto the skin when studying the effectiveness of PBMT.
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