Comparison of TORT and MCNP dose calculations for BNCT treatment planning
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN (United States)
- HOLTEC Int., Palm Harbor, FL (United States)
- Harvard Med. School, Cambridge, MA (United States)
Clinical trials to determine the efficacy of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) have been initiated in the United States at the Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the treatment of melanomas and glioblastomas and at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) for the treatment of glioblastomas. Medical physicists at BNL use the BNCT-Rtpe treatment planning software developed by the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), while the MIT team uses the NCTPLAN software being developed at the Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Both programs use Monte Carlo methods to simulate radiation transport and interactions. In the case of BNCT-Rtpe, the dose calculation is accomplished using the INEL-developed rtt-MC Monte Carlo module, which is specially tailored for BNCT applications. At MIT, the dose calculation is performed using the standard MCNP4A code developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. In both cases, the dose calculations are computationally intense, and reductions in the running times would significantly improve the treatment planning process. The purpose of the study discussed in this paper was to assess the relative computational merit of using a deterministic code to calculate dose distributions for BNCT applications. In the authors study, the TORT discrete ordinates code developed by ORNL was used to replace the MCNP4A code in the dose analysis for an MIT human subject. It is expected that with additional refinement and tailoring of the codes to this specific application, the performance of both MCNP and TORT can be improved further. However, it is clear from this study that deterministic codes such as TORT offer a viable and, in fact, very attractive alternative to Monte Carlo methods for application to BNCT treatment planning, especially for voxel-base anatomical models.
- OSTI ID:
- 427059
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-961103-; ISSN 0003-018X; TRN: 96:006307-0031
- Journal Information:
- Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 75; Conference: Winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the European Nuclear Society (ENS), Washington, DC (United States), 10-14 Nov 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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