A dose point kernel database using GATE Monte Carlo simulation toolkit for nuclear medicine applications: comparison...

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Computational Science
• Nuclear Medicine

Background:

• Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) is a Monte Carlo toolkit for medical physics simulations.
• GATE has been extended for radiotherapy and patient dosimetry applications.
• Accurate absorbed dose calculations are crucial for patient-specific dosimetry.

Purpose of the Study:

• To calculate dose point kernels (DPKs) using the GATE simulation toolkit.
• To compare GATE-calculated DPKs against established reference data.
• To generate a comprehensive dataset of total DPKs for commonly used radionuclides in nuclear medicine.

Main Methods:

• Simulated monoenergetic electron sources (10 keV–10 MeV) and beta/gamma emitting isotopes using GATE.
• Generated DPKs by simulating point isotropic sources in a sphere phantom and recording absorbed dose in concentric shells.
• Validated GATE's DPK calculations against established Monte Carlo codes (MCNP, EGS, FLUKA, etc.) and published data.

Main Results:

• GATE demonstrated reliable DPK calculations across various particle types and energies, with discrepancies <10% compared to other codes.
• Generated DPKs showed excellent agreement with published data.
• A novel dataset of total DPKs for 13 common radionuclides in water, bone, and lung was produced.

Conclusions:

• GATE is a robust and reliable tool for absorbed dose calculations in dosimetry applications.
• The novel DPK dataset facilitates patient-specific dosimetry using analytical point kernel convolution algorithms.