TY - GEN
T1 - Deterministic radiation transport simulations for diagnostic imaging applications
AU - Ghita, Monica
AU - Sjoden, Glenn E.
AU - Al-Basheer, Ahmad
AU - Arreola, Manuel M.
AU - Bolch, Wesley
AU - Lee, Choonsik
PY - 2009/12/1
Y1 - 2009/12/1
N2 - Monte Carlo methods have been established along the time as the gold standard for computer simulations in the medical physics community. Depending on the problem and user's needs, deterministic radiation transport simulations may provide a more detailed and faster solution. In this work we investigate the possibility of using deterministic radiation transport simulations as a viable and more convenient tool for real clinical applications. Therefore, the discrete ordinates PENTRAN code is used to calculate average organ doses in voxelized human phantoms and the results are compared with state-of-the-art MCNP5 Monte Carlo simulations in the diagnostic energy range (50-140 keV). Generally, good agreement for the average organ scalar fluxes, less than 6% difference, is obtained provided adequate quadrature order, mesh size and energy group structure is used in the deterministic calculations. The energy group structure, particularly for the diagnostic energy range, has a major impact on the deterministic solution for the average organ doses since the interaction and mass energy absorption coefficients are highly energy dependent in the diagnostic range. Though an optimization of the group structure is possible, it is problem (namely x-ray source spectrum) and organ dependent, which impose serious limitations of the deterministic solution for practical application in diagnostic medical physics.
AB - Monte Carlo methods have been established along the time as the gold standard for computer simulations in the medical physics community. Depending on the problem and user's needs, deterministic radiation transport simulations may provide a more detailed and faster solution. In this work we investigate the possibility of using deterministic radiation transport simulations as a viable and more convenient tool for real clinical applications. Therefore, the discrete ordinates PENTRAN code is used to calculate average organ doses in voxelized human phantoms and the results are compared with state-of-the-art MCNP5 Monte Carlo simulations in the diagnostic energy range (50-140 keV). Generally, good agreement for the average organ scalar fluxes, less than 6% difference, is obtained provided adequate quadrature order, mesh size and energy group structure is used in the deterministic calculations. The energy group structure, particularly for the diagnostic energy range, has a major impact on the deterministic solution for the average organ doses since the interaction and mass energy absorption coefficients are highly energy dependent in the diagnostic range. Though an optimization of the group structure is possible, it is problem (namely x-ray source spectrum) and organ dependent, which impose serious limitations of the deterministic solution for practical application in diagnostic medical physics.
KW - Average organ dose
KW - Deterministic discrete ordinates
KW - Monte Carlo
KW - Radiation transport
KW - Voxelized phantom
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:74549203221
SN - 9781615673490
T3 - American Nuclear Society - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
SP - 1822
EP - 1834
BT - American Nuclear Society - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
T2 - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
Y2 - 3 May 2009 through 7 May 2009
ER -