Authors:
G.Russo(a,b), C.Casarino*(c), G.C. Candiano(c), G.A.P. Cirrone(d), F.Romano(d)
Contributor Authors:
S.Guatelli(e)
Past Authors:
G.Arnetta(c), S.E.Mazzaglia(d)
(a)Fondazione Istituto San Raffaele G.Giglio, Contrada Pietra Pollastra Pisciotto, 90015 Cefalù (Palermo), Italy
(b) Institute for molecular bio-imaging and physiology (IBFM), National Research Council (CNR), Via F.lli Cervi 93, 20090 Segrate (Milano), Italy
(c)LAboratorio di Tecnologie Oncologiche (LATO), Contrada Pietra Pollastra Pisciotto, 90015 Cefalù (Palermo), Italy
(d)Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS), Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), via S.Sofia 62, 95123 Catania, Italy;
(e) Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, School of Engineering Physics, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522 Australia
Basic version of the iort_therapy application
iort_therapy is an application published in the official Geant4 9.5 version release. It is specifically developed to address typical needs related to the IntraOperative Radio-Therapy (IORT) technique. This technique delivers a single dose of radiation directly to the tumor bed, or to the exposed tumor, during surgery. The idea of iort_therapy is to provide a useful tool for Users interested to radiation dosimetry, dose planning and radio-protection studies in IORT. In fact, the application allows to reconstruct dose distribution curves in water or other materials, to plan dose distribution in the tumor treatment region with different clinical set-up, and to optimize radio-protection of normal patient tissues simulating a composite metallic shielding disc. iort_therapy reproduces the collimator beam line system of a typical medical mobile linac, the phantom, the detector and the composite metallic shielding disc. Via external macro commands it is possible to change the physic models, the collimator beam line, the phantom, the detector and shielding disc geometries, the visualization, the beam particle characteristics, and to activate the Graphical Users Interface (QT libraries are requested). A complete documentation of iort_therapy can be found in the related README file inside the official Geant4 10.3 version release.
This is a list of additional features that will be added in iort_therapy.
iort_therapy will be improved making it possible to simulate roto-translations of the collimator beam line respect the target thus reproducing the mobility characteristics of the linac.
A first work in progress version iort_therapy-DICOMis underdeveloped. This application imports in iort_therapy the main parts and facilities of the Geant4 Dicom extended-medical example, so it permits to replace the water phantom with a voxellized phantom version of the dicom images.
Also a second work in progress version iort_therapy-Human-Phantom is underdeveloped. It is based on the Geant4 Human-Phantom advanced example. Thus there will be the possibility to replace the water phantom with the human phantom.
All these configurations will be set by macro commands.