Program Information

A Framework to Perform Batch Simulations of Computational Voxel Phantoms to Study Organ Doses in Computed Tomography Using a Commercial Monte Carlo Software Package

R Bujila*, P Nowik , G Poludniowski , Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Stockholm

Presentations

SU-E-I-2 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: ImpactMC (CT Imaging, Erlangen, Germany) is a Monte Carlo (MC) software package that offers a GPU enabled, user definable and validated method for 3D dose distribution calculations for radiography and Computed Tomography (CT). ImpactMC, in and of itself, offers limited capabilities to perform batch simulations. The aim of this work was to develop a framework for the batch simulation of absorbed organ dose distributions from CT scans of computational voxel phantoms.

Methods: The ICRP 110 adult Reference Male and Reference Female computational voxel phantoms were formatted into compatible input volumes for MC simulations. A Matlab (The MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA) script was written to loop through a user defined set of simulation parameters and 1) generate input files required for the simulation, 2) start the MC simulation, 3) segment the absorbed dose for organs in the simulated dose volume and 4) transfer the organ doses to a database. A demonstration of the framework is made where the glandular breast dose to the adult Reference Female phantom, for a typical Chest CT examination, is investigated.

Results: A batch of 48 contiguous simulations was performed with variations in the total collimation and spiral pitch. The demonstration of the framework showed that the glandular dose to the right and left breast will vary depending on the start angle of rotation, total collimation and spiral pitch.

Conclusion: The developed framework provides a robust and efficient approach to performing a large number of user defined MC simulations with computational voxel phantoms in CT (minimal user interaction). The resulting organ doses from each simulation can be accessed through a database which greatly increases the ease of analyzing the resulting organ doses. The framework developed in this work provides a valuable resource when investigating different dose optimization strategies in CT.

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