No Arabic abstract
Purpose: To assess the effects of brain movements induced by heartbeat on dose distributions in synchrotron micro- and mini-beam radiaton therapy and to develop a model to help guide decisions and planning for future clinical trials. Methods: The Monte Carlo code PENELOPE was used to simulate the irradiation of a human head phantom with a variety of micro- and mini-beam arrays, with beams narrower than 100mum and above 500mum, respectively, and with radiation fields of 1cmx2cm and 2cmx2cm. The dose in the phantom due to these beams was calculated by superposing the dose profiles obtained for a single beam of 1mumx2cm. A parameter delta, accounting for the total displacement of the brain during the irradiation and due to the cardio-synchronous pulsation, was used to quantify the impact on peak-to-valley dose ratios and the full-width at half-maximum. Results: The difference between the maximum (at the phantom entrance) and the minimum (at the phantom exit) values of the peak-to-valley dose ratio reduces when the parameter $delta$ increases. The full-width at half-maximum remains almost constant with depth for any $delta$ value. Sudden changes in the two quantities are observed at the interfaces between the various tissues (brain, skull and skin) present in the head phantom. The peak-to-valley dose ratio at the center of the head phantom reduces when delta increases, remaining above 70% of the static value only for mini-beams and delta smaller than ~200mum. Conclusions: Optimal setups for brain treatments with synchrotron radiation micro- and mini-beam combs depend on the brain displacement due to cardio-synchronous pulsation. Peak-to-valley dose ratios larger than 90% of the maximum values obtained in the static case occur only for mini-beams and relatively large dose rates.
Cancer is a primary cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The radiotherapy plays a more and more important role in cancer treatment. In the radiotherapy, the dose distribution maps in patient need to be calculated and evaluated for the purpose of killing tumor and protecting healthy tissue. Monte Carlo (MC) radiation transport calculation is able to account for all aspects of radiological physics within 3D heterogeneous media such as the human body and generate the dose distribution maps accurately. However, an MC calculation for doses in radiotherapy usually takes a great mass of time to achieve acceptable statistical uncertainty, impeding the MC methods from wider clinic applications. Here we introduce a convolutional neural network (CNN), termed as Monte Carlo Denoising Net (MCDNet), to achieve the acceleration of the MC dose calculations in radiotherapy, which is trained to directly predict the high-photon (noise-free) dose maps from the low-photon (noise-much) dose maps. Thirty patients with postoperative rectal cancer who accepted intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) were enrolled in this study. 3D Gamma Index Passing Rate (GIPR) is used to evaluate the performance of predicted dose maps. The experimental results demonstrate that the MCDNet can improve the GIPR of dose maps of 1x107 photons over that of 1x108 photons, yielding over 10x speed-up in terms of photon numbers used in the MC simulations of IMRT. It is of great potential to investigate the performance of this method on the other tumor sites and treatment modalities.
Cone beam CT (CBCT) has been widely used for patient setup in image guided radiation therapy (IGRT). Radiation dose from CBCT scans has become a clinical concern. The purposes of this study are 1) to commission a GPU-based Monte Carlo (MC) dose calculation package gCTD for Varian On-Board Imaging (OBI) system and test the calculation accuracy, and 2) to quantitatively evaluate CBCT dose from the OBI system in typical IGRT scan protocols. We first conducted dose measurements in a water phantom. X-ray source model parameters used in gCTD are obtained through a commissioning process. gCTD accuracy is demonstrated by comparing calculations with measurements in water and in CTDI phantoms. 25 brain cancer patients are used to study dose in a standard-dose head protocol, and 25 prostate cancer patients are used to study dose in pelvis protocol and pelvis spotlight protocol. Mean dose to each organ is calculated. Mean dose to 2% voxels that have the highest dose is also computed to quantify the maximum dose. It is found that the mean dose value to an organ varies largely among patients. Moreover, dose distribution is highly non-homogeneous inside an organ. The maximum dose is found to be 1~3 times higher than the mean dose depending on the organ, and is up to 8 times higher for the entire body due to the very high dose region in bony structures. High computational efficiency has also been observed in our studies, such that MC dose calculation time is less than 5 min for a typical case.
We study the propagation of nucleons and nuclei in tissue-like media within a Monte Carlo Model for Heavy-ion Therapy (MCHIT) based on the GEANT4 toolkit (version 8.2). The model takes into account fragmentation of projectile nuclei and secondary interactions of produced nuclear fragments. Model predictions are validated with available experimental data obtained for water and PMMA phantoms irradiated by monoenergetic carbon-ion beams. The MCHIT model describes well (1) the depth-dose distributions in water and PMMA, (2) the doses measured for fragments of certain charge, (3) the distributions of positron emitting nuclear fragments produced by carbon-ion beams, and (4) the energy spectra of secondary neutrons measured at different angles to the beam direction. Radial dose profiles for primary nuclei and for different projectile fragments are calculated and discussed as possible input for evaluation of biological dose distributions. It is shown that at the periphery of the transverse dose profile close to the Bragg peak the dose from secondary nuclear fragments is comparable to the dose from primary nuclei.
Coherent Synchrotron Radiation (CSR) can play an important role by not only increasing the energy spread and emittance of a beam, but also leading to a potential instability. Previous studies of the CSR induced longitudinal instability were carried out for the CSR impedance due to dipole magnets. However, many storage rings include long wigglers where a large fraction of the synchrotron radiation is emitted. This includes high-luminosity factories such as DAPHNE, PEP-II, KEK-B, and CESR-C as well as the damping rings of future linear colliders. In this paper, the instability due to the CSR impedance from a wiggler is studied assuming a large wiggler parameter $K$. The primary consideration is a low frequency microwave-like instability, which arises near the pipe cut-off frequency. Detailed results are presented on the growth rate and threshold for the damping rings of several linear collider designs. Finally, the optimization of the relative fraction of damping due to the wiggler systems is discussed for the damping rings.
In a cyclotron-based proton therapy facility, the energy changes are performed by means of a degrader of variable thickness. The interaction of the proton beam with the degrader creates energy tails and increases the beam emittance. A precise model of the degraded beam properties is important not only to better understand the performance of a facility already in operation, but also to support the development of new proton therapy concepts. The exact knowledge of the degraded beam properties, in terms of energy spectrum and transverse phase space, depends on the model used to describe the proton interaction with the degrader material. In this work the model of a graphite degrader has been developed with four Monte Carlo codes: three conventional Monte Carlo codes (FLUKA, GEANT4 and MCNPX) and the multi-purpose particle tracking code OPAL equipped with a simplified Monte Carlo routine. From the comparison between the different codes, we can deduce how the accuracy of the degrader model influences the precision of the beam dynamics model of a possible transport line downstream of the degrader.