FLUKA and PENELOPE simulations of 10 keV to 10 MeV photons in LYSO and soft tissue

Monte Carlo simulations of electromagnetic particle interactions and transport by FLUKA and PENELOPE were compared. 10 keV to 10 MeV incident photon beams impinged a LYSO crystal and a soft-tissue phantom. Central-axis as well as off-axis depth doses agreed within 1 s.d.; no systematic under- or over-estimate of the pulse height spectra was observed from 100 keV to 10 MeV for both materials, agreement was within 5%. Simulation of photon and electron transport and interactions at this level of precision and reliability is of significant impact, for instance, on treatment monitoring of hadrontherapy where a code like FLUKA is needed to simulate the full suite of particles and interactions (not just electromagnetic). At the interaction-by-interaction level, apart from known differences in condensed history techniques, two-quanta positron annihilation at rest was found to differ between the two codes. PENELOPE produced a 511 keV sharp line, whereas FLUKA produced visible acolinearity, a feature recently implemented to account for the momentum of shell electrons. - Highlights: • Monte Carlo simulations of electromagnetic particle interactions and transport by FLUKA and PENELOPE were compared. • 10 keV to 10 MeV incident photon beams impinged a LYSO crystal and a soft-tissue phantom. • The pulse height spectra, depth doses central-axis as well as off-axis were found to agree within statistical uncertainty; no systematic difference was observed