A patient-specific Monte Carlo dose-calculation method for photon beams

A patient-specific, CT-based, Monte Carlo dose-calculation method for photon beams has been developed to correctly account for inhomogeneity in the patient. The method employs the EGS4 system to sample the interaction of radiation in the medium. CT images are used to describe the patient geometry and to determine the density and atomic number in each voxel. The user code (MCPAT) provides the data describing the incident beams, and performs geometry checking and energy scoring in patient CT images. Several variance reduction techniques have been implemented to improve the computation efficiency. The method was verified with measured data and other calculations, both in homogeneous and inhomogeneous media. The method was also applied to a lung treatment, where significant differences in dose distributions, especially in the low-density region, were observed when compared with the results using an equivalent pathlength method. Comparison of the DVHs showed that the Monte Carlo calculated plan predicted an underdose of nearly 20% to the target, while the maximum doses to the cord and the heart were increased by 25% and 33%, respectively. These results suggested that the Monte Carlo method may have an impact on treatment designs, and also that it can be used as a benchmark to assess the accuracy of other dose calculation algorithms. The computation time for the lung case employing five 15-MV wedged beams, with an approximate field size of 13 x 13 cm and the dose grid size of 0.375 cm, was less than 14 h on a 175-MHz computer with a standard deviation of 1.5% in the high-dose region. (C) 1998 American Association of Physicists in Medicine. [S0094-2405(98)00906-7].