Multigroup neutron dose calculations for proton therapy
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
We have developed tools for the preparation of coupled multigroup proton/neutron cross section libraries. Our method is to use NJOY to process evaluated nuclear data files for incident particles below 150 MeV and MCNPX to produce data for higher energies. We modified the XSEX3 program of the MCNPX code system to produce Legendre expansions of scattering matrices generated by sampling the physics models that are comparable to the output of the GROUPR routine of NJOY. Our code combines the low and high energy scattering data with user input stopping powers and energy deposition cross sections that we also calculated using MCNPX. Our code also calculates momentum transfer coefficients for the library and optionally applies an energy straggling model to the scattering cross sections and stopping powers. The motivation was initially for deterministic solution of space radiation shielding calculations using Attila, but noting that proton therapy treatment planning may neglect secondary neutron dose assessments because of difficulty and expense, we have also investigated the feasibility of multi group methods for this application. We have shown that multigroup MCNPX solutions for secondary neutron dose compare well with continuous energy solutions and are obtainable with less than half computational cost. This efficiency comparison neglects the cost of preparing the library data, but this becomes negligible when distributed over many multi group calculations. Our deterministic calculations illustrate recognized obstacles that may have to be overcome before discrete ordinates methods can be efficient alternatives for proton therapy neutron dose calculations.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 962391
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-01784; LA-UR-09-1784; TRN: US0903439
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Inter. Conf. on Mathematics, Computational Methods & Reactor Physics ; May 3, 2009 ; Saratoga Springs, NY
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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