BrachyGUI: An adjunct to an accelerated Monte Carlo photon transport code for patient-specific brachytherapy dose calculations and analysis

Abstract

A number of accelerated Monte Carlo (MC) codes have been developed in recent years for brachytherapy applications, one of which is PTRAN_CT. Developed as an extension to the well-benchmarked PTRAN code, PTRAN_CT can be used to perform efficient patient-specific dose calculations. The code can explicitly account for the patient geometry converted from computed-tomography (CT) images, as well as perturbations due to the brachytherapy applicator and seeds. We have developed a software tool called BrachyGUI that provides an integrated environment for preparing patient and treatment plan-specific input data files for PTRAN_CT. It also comes with dose calculation, analysis, and treatment planning capabilities. In this article, we will describe the interface of BrachyGUI with PTRAN_CT for CT-based calculations, and examine the calculation efficiency of PTRAN_CT. We conclude that it is now feasible to use PTRAN_CT for high dose rate brachytherapy treatment planning on a routine clinical basis. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.