A method to perform multi-scale Monte Carlo simulations in the clinical setting.

In order to model the track structure of clinical mega-voltage photon beams in a reasonable time, it is necessary to use a multi-scale approach incorporating a track-structure algorithm for the regions of interest and a condensed history algorithm for the rest of the geometry. This paper introduces a multi-scale Monte Carlo system, which is used to hand off particle trajectory information between the two algorithms. Since condensed history algorithms ignore electrons with energy below a fixed threshold and those electrons are important to the track structure on the micrometre scale, it is necessary to hand over all charged particles to the track-structure algorithm only in a volume that extends beyond the scoring volume. Additionally, the system is validated against experimental results for radio-isotope gamma spectra.