MO‐F‐CAMPUS‐I‐03: GPU Accelerated Monte Carlo Technique for Fast Concurrent Image and Dose Simulation

Abstract

Purpose:To develop an accurate and fast Monte Carlo (MC) method of simulating CT that is capable of correlating dose with image quality using voxelized phantoms.Methods:A realistic voxelized phantom based on patient CT data, XCAT, was used with a GPU accelerated MC code for helical MDCT. Simulations were done with both uniform density organs and with textured organs. The organ doses were validated using previous experimentally validated simulations of the same phantom under the same conditions. Images acquired by tracking photons through the phantom with MC require lengthy computation times due to the large number of photon histories necessary for accurate representation of noise. A substantial speed up of the process was attained by using a low number of photon histories with kernel denoising of the projections from the scattered photons. These FBP reconstructed images were validated against those that were acquired in simulations using many photon histories by ensuring a minimal normalized root mean square error.Results:Organ doses simulated in the XCAT phantom are within 10% of the reference values. Corresponding images attained using projection kernel smoothing were attained with 3 orders of magnitude less computation time compared to a reference simulation using many photon histories.Conclusion:Combining GPU acceleration with kernel denoising of scattered photon projections in MC simulations allows organ dose and corresponding image quality to be attained with reasonable accuracy and substantially reduced computation time than is possible with standard simulation approaches.