title: Monte Carlo-based dose calculation engine for minibeam radiation therapy.
abstract: Minibeam radiation therapy (MBRT) is an innovative radiotherapy approach based on the well-established tissue sparing effect of arrays of quasi-parallel micrometre-sized beams. In order to guide the preclinical trials in progress at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), a Monte Carlo-based dose calculation engine has been developed and successfully benchmarked with experimental data in anthropomorphic phantoms. Additionally, a realistic example of treatment plan is presented. Despite the micron scale of the voxels used to tally dose distributions in MBRT, the combination of several efficiency optimisation methods allowed to achieve acceptable computation times for clinical settings (approximately 2 h). The calculation engine can be easily adapted with little or no programming effort to other synchrotron sources or for dose calculations in presence of contrast agents.
authors.affiliation: Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot (DSV/I2BM/SHFJ), Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), 4, Place du Général Leclerc, F-91401 Orsay, France; Institut de Tècniques Energètiques (INTE), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain; ID17 Biomedical Beamline, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), B.P. 220, 6 rue Jules Horowitz, F-38043 Grenoble Cedex, France. Electronic address: immamartinez@gmail.com.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Martínez-Rovira
authors.affiliation: Institut de Tècniques Energètiques (INTE), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain; Networking Research Centre, CIBER-BBN, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sempau
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Imagerie et Modélisation en Neurobiologie et Cancérologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 15 rue Georges Clemenceau, Bât. 440F-91406 Orsay Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Prezado
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D059351:Organ Sparing Treatments / Q000379:methods*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011874:Radiometry; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Minibeam radiation therapy; Monte Carlo calculations; Spatially fractionated synchrotron radiotherapy techniques; Treatment planning system