title: Description and dosimetric verification of the PEREGRINE Monte Carlo dose calculation system for photon beams incident on a water phantom.
abstract: PEREGRINE is a three-dimensional Monte Carlo dose calculation system written specifically for radiotherapy. This paper describes the implementation and overall dosimetric accuracy of PEREGRINE physics algorithms, beam model, and beam commissioning procedure. Particle-interaction data, tracking geometries, scoring, variance reduction, and statistical analysis are described. The BEAM code system is used to model the treatment-independent accelerator head, resulting in the identification of primary and scattered photon sources and an electron contaminant source. The magnitude of the electron source is increased to improve agreement with measurements in the buildup region in the largest fields. Published measurements provide an estimate of backscatter on monitor chamber response. Commissioning consists of selecting the electron beam energy, determining the scale factor that defines dose per monitor unit, and describing treatment-dependent beam modifiers. We compare calculations with measurements in a water phantom for open fields, wedges, blocks, and a multileaf collimator for 6 and 18 MV Varian Clinac 2100C photon beams. All calculations are reported as dose per monitor unit. Aside from backscatter estimates, no additional, field-specific normalization is included in comparisons with measurements. Maximum discrepancies were less than either 2% of the maximum dose or 1.2 mm in isodose position for all field sizes and beam modifiers.
authors.affiliation: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California 94550, USA. chs@llnl.gov
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Hartmann Siantar
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Walling
authors.forename: T P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Daly
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Faddegon
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Albright
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bergstrom
authors.forename: A F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Bielajew
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chuang
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Garrett
authors.forename: R K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: House
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Knapp
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Wieczorek
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Verhey
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004307:Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D017785:Photons; D011874:Radiometry / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D014867:Water
chemical_list: D014867:Water