Common platform of Monte Carlo dose calculation on universal grid interface with Geant4 based particle therapy simulation framework

Abstract

While Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is believed to be the most reliable method of dose calculation in particle therapy, the simulation time is critical in attaining sufficient statistical accuracy for clinical applications. Therefore, parallelization of simulations is essential. This paper describes a common platform of MC dose calculation in grid-distributed computing environments. The platform is flexible and effective for dose calculation in both clinical and research applications for particle therapy. The platform consists of the universal grid interface (UGI) and the Geant4-based particle therapy simulation framework (PTSIM). The UGI, written in Python, provides a command-line interface for job submission, file manipulation, and monitoring in multiple-grid middleware environments. The PTSIM is a single software application for modeling a treatment port with patient data obtained from CT images. The common platform was constructed in grid computing environments using the computing resources in five institutions. The platform utilized these resources through the NAREGI grid middleware under UGI to provide stable computing resources and a common environment for MC dose calculation in particle therapy. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.