Current electron beam treatment planning algorithms are inadequate to calculate dose distributions in heterogeneous phantoms. Fast Monte Carlo algorithms are accurate in general but their clinical implementation needs validation. Calculations of electron beam dose distributions performed using the fast Monte Carlo system XVMC and the well-benchmarked general-purpose Monte Carlo code EGSnrc were compared with measurements. Irradiations were performed using the 9 MeV and 15 MeV beams from the Clinac 18 accelerator with standard conditions. Percent depth doses and lateral profiles were measured with thermoluminescent dosimeter and electron diode respectively. The accelerator was modelled using EGS4/BEAM, and using an experiment-based beam model. All measurements were corrected by EGSnrc calculated stopping power ratios. Overall, the agreement between measurement and calculation is excellent. Small remaining discrepancies can be attributed to the non-equivalence between physical and simulated lung material, precision in energy tuning, beam model parameters optimisation and detector fluence perturbation effects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33750 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Doucet, Robert. |
| Contributors | Seuntjens, Jan P. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Medical Radiation Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001862604, proquestno: MQ78867, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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