Research article summary (published 29 Sep 2009):

A preliminary study of in-house Monte Carlo simulations: an integrated Monte Carlo verification system.

Full Abstract

PURPOSE: To develop an infrastructure for the integrated Monte Carlo verification system (MCVS) to verify the accuracy of conventional dose calculations, which often fail to accurately predict dose distributions, mainly due to inhomogeneities in the patient's anatomy, for example, in lung and bone. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The MCVS consists of the graphical user interface (GUI) based on a computational environment for radiotherapy research (CERR) with MATLAB language. The MCVS GUI acts as an interface between the MCVS and a commercial treatment planning system to import the treatment plan, create MC input files, and analyze MC output dose files. The MCVS consists of the EGSnrc MC codes, which include EGSnrc/BEAMnrc to simulate the treatment head and EGSnrc/DOSXYZnrc to calculate the dose distributions in the patient/phantom. In order to improve computation time without approximations, an in-house cluster system was constructed. RESULTS: The phase-space data of a 6-MV photon beam from a Varian Clinac unit was developed and used to establish several benchmarks under homogeneous conditions. The MC results agreed with the ionization chamber measurements to within 1%. The MCVS GUI could import and display the radiotherapy treatment plan created by the MC method and various treatment planning systems, such as RTOG and DICOM-RT formats. Dose distributions could be analyzed by using dose profiles and dose volume histograms and compared on the same platform. With the cluster system, calculation time was improved in line with the increase in the number of central processing units (CPUs) at a computation efficiency of more than 98%. CONCLUSIONS: Development of the MCVS was successful for performing MC simulations and analyzing dose distributions.

Author information

Author/s: Mukumoto, Nobutaka (N); Tsujii, Katsutomo (K); Saito, Susumu (S); Yasunaga, Masayoshi (M); Takegawa, Hideki (H); Yamamoto, Tokihiro (T); Numasaki, Hodaka (H); Teshima, Teruki (T);

Affiliation: Department of Medical Physics and Engineering, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Suita, Osaka, Japan.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: International journal of radiation oncology, biology, physics (Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Oct; vol 75 (issue 2) : pp 571-9

Dates: Created 2009/09/08; Completed 2009/09/21;

PMID: 19735883, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 9/21/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Algorithms Benchmarking Computer Graphics Computer Simulation Humans Monte Carlo Method

Particle Accelerators - instrumentation Phantoms, Imaging Radiotherapy Dosage Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted - instrumentation; methods Radiotherapy, Conformal - methods User-Computer Interface

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