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Abstract

This study was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Monte Carlo (MC) method in stereotactic radiotherapy for brain tumor. The difference in doses predicted by the conventional Ray-tracing (Ray) and the advanced MC algorithms was comprehensively investigated through the simulations for phantom and patient data, actual measurement of dose distribution, and the retrospective analysis of 77 brain tumors patients. These investigations consistently showed that the MC algorithm overestimated the dose than the Ray algorithm and the MC overestimation was generally increased as decreasing the beams size and increasing the number of beams delivered. These results demonstrated that the advanced MC algorithm would be inaccurate than the conventional Raytracing algorithm when applied to a (quasi-) homogeneous brain tumors. Thus, caution may be needed to apply the MC method to brain radiosurgery or radiotherapy. 

Author information

Kang KM1,2, Jeong BK1,2, Choi HS1,2, Song JH1,2, Park BD3, Lim YK4, Jeong H1,2.

1Department of Radiation Oncology, Gyeongsang National University School of Medicine and Gyeongsang National University Hospital, Jinju, Republic of Korea.

2Institute of Health Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, Republic of Korea.

3Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Changwon Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Changwon, Republic of Korea.

4Proton Therapy Center, National Cancer Center, Goyang, Republic of Korea.