Review of fast Monte Carlo codes for dose calculation in radiation therapy treatment planning

Abstract

An important requirement in radiation therapy is a fast and accurate treatment planning system. This system, using computed tomography (CT) data, direction, and characteristics of the beam, calculates the dose at all points of the patient's volume. The two main factors in treatment planning system are accuracy and speed. According to these factors, various generations of treatment planning systems are developed. This article is a review of the Fast Monte Carlo treatment planning algorithms, which are accurate and fast at the same time. The Monte Carlo techniques are based on the transport of each individual particle (e.g., photon or electron) in the tissue. The transport of the particle is done using the physics of the interaction of the particles with matter. Other techniques transport the particles as a group. For a typical dose calculation in radiation therapy the code has to transport several millions particles, which take a few hours, therefore, the Monte Carlo techniques are accurate, but slow for clinical use. In recent years, with the development of the ‘fast’ Monte Carlo systems, one is able to perform dose calculation in a reasonable time for clinical use. The acceptable time for dose calculation is in the range of one minute. There is currently a growing interest in the fast Monte Carlo treatment planning systems and there are many commercial treatment planning systems that perform dose calculation in radiation therapy based on the Monte Carlo technique.

Evaluation of material heterogeneity dosimetric effects using radiochromic film for COMS eye plaques loaded with 125I seeds (model I25.S16)

“…29 Monte Carlo codes have been widely used for simulations of radiation therapy dose calculations in external beam and brachytherapy. 7,12,13,[30][31][32][33] 35,36 They found the T(r) values to be seed model dependent for the same radionuclide. 13 The T(r) values for 125 I seed (model 6711) and 103 Pd seed (model 200) were published in the TG-129 report.…”

X-ray interferometry without analyzer for breast CT application: a simulation study

“…46 Fast Monte-Carlo methods maybe used to expedite the algorithm, as is done for mammography or BCT. 45,46,48 We are in communication with Microworks GmbH, Germany, 49 to build preliminary MPG gratings suitable for breast imaging. In the future, we anticipate building a prototype by modifying existing TLXI systems in Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LSU, and at the synchrotron source at Louisiana State University Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices.…”

A Review on the Use of Grid-Based Boltzmann Equation Solvers for Dose Calculation in External Photon Beam Treatment Planning

“…On the other hand, fast MC codes have been developed to improve the speed of dose calculation for clinical use. Examples include the Voxel-based Monte Carlo (VMC, VMC++), Macro Monte Carlo, Dose Planning Method (DPM), and MCDOSE [43–50]. Continuous development of more efficient MC codes in the future may compete with currently commercial available D-LBTE methods in terms of both accuracy and speed.…”