On calculating kerma, collision kerma and radiative yields.

Purpose: To study the relationships between dose (D), kerma (K), and collision kerma ( ) in photon beams and to investigate total radiative yields for electrons and positrons as a function of energy. To do this accurately required calculating collision kerma directly as a function of position in a phantom and making changes to the EGSnrc package (including DOSRZnrc and g applications).

Methods: Changes were made to the EGSnrc system to allow the user to distinguish events according to their initiating process, most importantly relaxation particles initiated by electron impact ionization as opposed to initiated by photons, especially those events depositing energy below energy cutoffs after relaxation events.

A hybrid phase-space and histogram source model for GPU-based Monte Carlo radiotherapy dose calculation.

In GPU-based Monte Carlo simulations for radiotherapy dose calculation, source modelling from a phase-space source can be an efficiency bottleneck. Previously, this has been addressed using phase-space-let (PSL) sources, which provided significant efficiency enhancement. We propose that additional speed-up can be achieved through the use of a hybrid primary photon point source model combined with a secondary PSL source.

Pre-treatment radiotherapy dose verification using Monte Carlo doselet modulation in a spherical phantom.

Due to the increasing complexity of radiotherapy delivery, accurate dose verification has become an essential part of the clinical treatment process. The purpose of this work was to develop a pre-treatment verification technique capable of quickly reconstructing 3D dose distributions from both coplanar and non-coplanar treatments. For each treatment field, electronic portal images were taken in non-transmission mode (with no patient in the beam) allowing the derivation of the delivered fluence maps.

GPU-based Monte Carlo radiotherapy dose calculation using phase-space sources.

A novel phase-space source implementation has been designed for graphics processing unit (GPU)-based Monte Carlo dose calculation engines. Short of full simulation of the linac head, using a phase-space source is the most accurate method to model a clinical radiation beam in dose calculations. However, in GPU-based Monte Carlo dose calculations where the computation efficiency is very high, the time required to read and process a large phase-space file becomes comparable to the particle transport time.