SU‐E‐CAMPUS‐I‐02: Estimation of the Dosimetric Error Caused by the Voxelization of Hybrid Computational Phantoms Using Triangle Mesh‐Based Monte Carlo Transport

Abstract

Purpose:Computational voxel phantom provides realistic anatomy but the voxel structure may result in dosimetric error compared to real anatomy composed of perfect surface. We analyzed the dosimetric error caused from the voxel structure in hybrid computational phantoms by comparing the voxel‐based doses at different resolutions with triangle mesh‐based doses.Methods:We incorporated the existing adult male UF/NCI hybrid phantom in mesh format into a Monte Carlo transport code, penMesh that supports triangle meshes. We calculated energy deposition to selected organs of interest for parallel photon beams with three mono energies (0.1, 1, and 10 MeV) in antero‐posterior geometry. We also calculated organ energy deposition using three voxel phantoms with different voxel resolutions (1, 5, and 10 mm) using MCNPX2.7.Results:Comparison of organ energy deposition between the two methods showed that agreement overall improved for higher voxel resolution, but for many organs the differences were small. Difference in the energy deposition for 1 MeV, for example, decreased from 11.5% to 1.7% in muscle but only from 0.6% to 0.3% in liver as voxel resolution increased from 10 mm to 1 mm. The differences were smaller at higher energies. The number of photon histories processed per second in voxels were 6.4×104, 3.3×104, and 1.3×104, for 10, 5, and 1 mm resolutions at 10 MeV, respectively, while meshes ran at 4.0×104 histories/sec.Conclusion:The combination of hybrid mesh phantom and penMesh was proved to be accurate and of similar speed compared to the voxel phantom and MCNPX. The lowest voxel resolution caused a maximum dosimetric error of 12.6% at 0.1 MeV and 6.8% at 10 MeV but the error was insignificant in some organs. We will apply the tool to calculate dose to very thin layer tissues (e.g., radiosensitive layer in gastro intestines) which cannot be modeled by voxel phantoms.