Macro Response Monte Carlo algorithm evaluated through electron spectra. / Avaliação de algoritmo Macro Response Monte Carlo através dos espectros de elétrons

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

In radiotherapy the computer simulation elapsed time for treatment planning is still a prob- lem. Several techniques for electron transport variance reduction have been developed in order to speed up the calculations. Some of them are: Macro Monte Carlo (MMC), Response History Monte Carlo (RHMC) and Macro Response Monte Carlo (MRMC). All of them use a database where electrons histories were previously simulated. These algorithms have been evaluated only by absorbed dose. This work shows a comparison between electron spectra simulated by our implementation of MRMC. Such algorithm uses a database where electron histories were pre-simulated in small homogeneous spheres (called kugel) for several different initial ener- gies and some different radii. The MRMC transportation code uses the largest kugel size for electron transportation, since it does not cross any material boundary. In this implementation the electron transport through a boundary is done in a straight line and the energy correction is made by continuous slowing down approximation. The kugel database has been generated using Geant4 version 8.0 for water, soft tissue and compact bone, with energy range spanning from 31.63 MeV down to 178 keV and with radius range from 0.025 to 1.0 cm. The MRMC benchmarks consist of an electron pencil beam simulation in homogeneous and heterogeneous cylindrical phantoms. The forward and lateral electron output spectra are computed and com- pared against Geant4 simulations. We have simulated 106 histories in both systems, so the histograms are compared without any normalization factors. The agreement between spectra shapes have been evaluated and show to be good above 5 MeV. The results show an agreement better than 1.7% in the peak energy for energies above 5 MeV, for water and soft tissue homo- geneous phantoms. The agreement for compact bone homogeneous phantom between peaks of forward spectra were around 5% and for side spectra were better than 2% for energies above 5 MeV. The benchmarks have shown that our implementation of MRMC are up to 15 times faster than Geant4 for homogeneous phantoms and 5 times for heterogeneous ones.

ASSUNTO(S)

monte carlo electron transportation. transporte de elétrons monte carlo radiotherapy radioterapia

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