Publications by authors named "David Boersma"
Purpose: The Local Effect Model version one (LEM I) is applied clinically across Europe to quantify the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of carbon ion beams. It requires the full particle fluence spectrum differential in energy in each voxel as input parameter. Treatment planning systems (TPSs) use beamline-specific look-up tables generated with Monte Carlo (MC) codes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: This paper presents a novel method for the calculation of three-dimensional (3D) Bragg-Gray water-to-detector stopping power ratio (s ) distributions for proton and carbon ion beams.
Methods: Contrary to previously published fluence-based calculations of the stopping power ratio, the s calculation method used in this work is based on the specific way GATE/Geant4 scores the energy deposition. It only requires the use of the so-called DoseActor, as available in GATE, for the calculation of the s at any point of a 3D dose distribution.
Article Synopsis
- Geant4 is a Monte Carlo simulation tool used to model how particles travel through matter, and this study focuses on its application in proton pencil beam scanning therapy, specifically looking at various parameter settings.
- Simulations using different prebuilt physics lists and production cuts were analyzed and compared against measurement data from a clinical facility, considering factors like step size and patient anatomy derived from CT scans.
- The results indicate that while some physics lists show variations in results depending on step size, the overall differences in dose calculations are clinically negligible, with a small impact observed in patient-specific models related to production cuts.