EURADOS intercomparison exercise on Monte Carlo modelling of a medical linear accelerator.

Background: In radiotherapy, Monte Carlo (MC) methods are considered a gold standard to calculate accurate dose distributions, particularly in heterogeneous tissues. EURADOS organized an international comparison with six participants applying different MC models to a real medical linear accelerator and to one homogeneous and four heterogeneous dosimetric phantoms.

Aims: The aim of this exercise was to identify, by comparison of different MC models with a complete experimental dataset, critical aspects useful for MC users to build and calibrate a simulation and perform a dosimetric analysis.

Analysis of computational problems expressing the overall uncertainties: photons, neutrons and electrons.

In the frame of the EU Coordination Action CONRAD (coordinated network for radiation dosimetry), WP4 was dedicated to work on computational dosimetry with an action entitled 'Uncertainty assessment in computational dosimetry: an intercomparison of approaches'. Participants attempted one or more of eight problems. This paper presents the results from problems 4-8-dealing with the overall uncertainty budget estimate; a short overview of each problem is presented together with a discussion of the most significant results and conclusions.

Application of Monte Carlo calculation and OEDIPE software for virtual calibration of an in vivo counting system.

OEDIPE (a French acronym standing for 'Tool for Personalized Internal Dose Assessment'), developed by IRSN, is used to perform virtual calibration of a real in vivo counting system. The system, installed recently at Le Vésinet, consists of four Broad Energy germanium detectors. CT images of Livermore torso phantom are used to create a voxel phantom after segmentation using Dosigray software.