A new simulation tool for hadrontherapy
Paper: 346
Session: A (talk)
Speaker: Giordano, Simona, INFN, Genova
Keywords: application programming, data bases, data presentation, simulation, WWW applications
A new simulation tool for hadrontherapy
S.Garelli(1-2), S.Giordano(1-2) and S.Squarcia(1)
(1) Dipartimento di Fisica e Sezione INFN di Genova
(2) Scuola di Specializzazione in Fisica Sanitaria - Universita` degli
Studi di Genova
The use of proton and ion beams in the framework of the TERA project needs a
very appropriate Monte Carlo program for beam and interaction simulations.
Simulation codes available were originally designed for high energy physics
experiments and it is thus necessary to verify if they are adequate in the
energy range of radiotherapic interest.
After a comparison between GEANT, a code developed at CERN, in which FLUKA is
one of packages describing hadronic shower development, and FLUKA itself we
obtained the following results: in the interesting energy range the minimum
detector step for FLUKA is about three order of magnitude better than for
GEANT. When the proton energy is below 1 MeV, however, the use of FLUKA is
still very approximate and the conclusions one can reach must be considered
with particular care. On the contrary, even when the simulation framework is
very simple, the geometry description is easier using GEANT.
The project we have started provides a interactive window under WWW in order
to put all the data required by FLUKA in a very friendly way, allows an
interactive help, provides a easier geometry configuration and gives the
possibility to access to the available data from hadrontherapy for an on-line
comparison.
The treatment planning simulation for protons is our goal. For the time being
some results for the beam description and all the correlated quantities is
presented. The realization of a word wide data-base both for physical and
medical data with an interactive update to allows a remote consultation inside
the TERA Collaboration[1] is also shown.
[1] Amaldi U., Overview of the Hadrontherapy Project in: Amaldi U. and Silari
M. Editors, The TERA Project and the Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy,
INFN-LNF - Divisione Ricerca, 1994; 41-181