Comparison between PENELOPE and electron Monte Carlo simulations of electron fields used in the treatment of conjunctival lymphoma.

For the treatment of conjunctival lymphoma in the early stages, external beam radiotherapy offers a curative approach. Such treatment requires the use of highly conformed small radiation beams. The beam size is so small that even advanced treatment planning systems have difficulties in calculating dose distributions. One possible approach for optimizing the treatment technique and later performing treatment planning is by means of full Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. In this paper, we compare experimental absorbed dose profiles obtained with a collimator used at the University Hospital Essen, with MC simulations done with the general-purpose radiation transport code PENELOPE. The collimator is also simulated with the hybrid MC code electron Monte Carlo (eMC) implemented in the commercial treatment planning system Eclipse (Varian). The results obtained with PENELOPE have a maximum difference with experimental data of 2.3%, whereas the eMC code differs systematically from the experimental data about 7% in the penumbra tails. We also show that PENELOPE simulations are able to obtain absorbed dose maps with an equivalent statistical uncertainty to the one found with eMC in similar CPU times.

Efficient Monte Carlo simulation of multileaf collimators using geometry-related variance-reduction techniques.

A technique for accelerating the simulation of multileaf collimators with Monte Carlo methods is presented. This technique, which will be referred to as the movable-skin method, is based on geometrical modifications that do not alter the physical shape of the leaves, but that affect the logical way in which the Monte Carlo code processes the geometry. Zones of the geometry from which secondary radiation can emerge are defined as skins and the radiation transport throughout these zones is simulated accurately, while transport in non-skin zones is modelled approximately. The skins method is general and can be applied to most of the radiation transport Monte Carlo codes used in radiotherapy. The code AUTOLINAC for the automatic generation of the geometry file and the physical parameters required in a simulation of a linac with the Monte Carlo code PENELOPE is also introduced. This code has a modularized library of all Varian Clinac machines with their multileaf collimators and electron applicators. AUTOLINAC automatically determines the position of skins and the parameter values employed for other variance-reduction techniques that are adequate for the simulation of a linac. Using the adaptive variance-reduction techniques presented here it is possible to simulate with PENELOPE an entire linac with a fully closed multileaf collimator in two hours. For this benchmark a single core of a 2.8 GHz processor was used and 2% statistical uncertainty (1sigma) of the absorbed dose in water was reached with a voxel size of 2 x 2 x 2 mm(3). Several configurations of the multileaf collimator were simulated and the results were found to be in excellent agreement with experimental measurements.