Monte Carlo simulation on pre-clinical irradiation: A heterogeneous phantom study on monoenergetic kilovoltage photon beams

Abstract

This study investigated radiation dose variations in pre-clinical irradiation due to the photon beam energy and presence of tissue heterogeneity. Based on the same mouse computed tomography image dataset, three phantoms namely, heterogeneous, homogeneous and bone homogeneous were used. These phantoms were generated by overriding the relative electron density of no voxel (heterogeneous), all voxel (homogeneous) and the bone voxel (bone homogeneous) to one. 360° photon arcs with beam energies of 50 – 1250 keV were used in mouse irradiations. Doses in the above phantoms were calculated using the EGSnrc-based DOSXYZnrc code through the DOSCTP. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out in parallel using multiple nodes in a high-performance computing cluster. It was found that the dose conformity increased with the increase of the photon beam energy from the keV to MeV range. For the heterogeneous mouse phantom, increasing the photon beam energy from 50 keV to 1250 keV increased seven times the dose deposited at the isocenter. For the bone dose enhancement, the mean dose was 2.7 times higher when the bone heterogeneity was not neglected using the 50 keV photon beams in the mouse irradiation. Bone dose enhancement affecting the mean dose was found in the photon beams with energy range of 50 – 200 keV and the dose enhancement decreased with an increase of the beam energy. Moreover, the MeV photon beam had a higher dose at the isocenter, and a better dose conformity compared to the keV beam.