A METHODOLOGY FOR DEFINING IRRADIATION SCHEMES FROM PHASE-SPACE FILES TO SIMULATE RADIOTHERAPY PLANNING

Abstract

The complex planning processes in radiotherapy treatments are commonly approached using computer tools that determine the dose distribution corresponding to different irradiation schemes aimed at providing viable options to fulfil the clinical and physical requirements of each case. This paper reports on a novel methodology developed to calculate spatial distributions of doses corresponding to stereotactic irradiations, incorporating arc-irradiation schemes and being representative of treatment planning, by means of Phase-Space files; and using Monte Carlo simulations to perform radiation transport. The methodology was implemented with the FLUKA code and was applied to a situation of clinical complexity using tomographic images of a standardized dosimetry control phantom for stereotactic radiosurgery. The preliminary results obtained from the first step of the process, aimed at incorporating simple schemes, along with clinical radiosurgery phantom irradiation, confirm the feasibility of the proposed methodology and indicate a promising performance for an alternative or independent calculation of spatial dose distributions in stereotactic irradiations.