An EGS4 Monte Carlo user code for radiation therapy planning

An EGS4 Monte Carlo user code (the UCRTP code) with voxel geometry has been developed as a prototype of the dose calculation engine for radiation therapy planning. A series of dose calculations for photon beam irradiation to a simplified heterogenous voxel phantom of a lung cancer patient has shown that significant build-up in lung tumor and build-down in surrounding normal lung tissue region exist due to the heterogeneity of the media and small field size. Most of the heterogeneity correction algorithms employed by the current commercial treatment planning systems are not satisfactory enough to account for the build-up/down. Since the commercial systems may significantly underestimate the dose in normal lung tissues, sufficient verification and quality assurance of the radiation therapy planning is needed especially in the lung cancer treatment. (author)