Differential pencil beam dose computation model for photons

Abstract

Differential pencil beam (DPB) is defined as the dose distribution relative to the position of the first collision, per unit collision density, for a monoenergetic pencil beam of photons in an infinite homogeneous medium of unit density. We have generated DPB dose distribution tables for a number of photon energies in water using the Monte Carlo method. The three-dimensional (3D) nature of the transport of photons and electrons is automatically incorporated in DPB dose distributions. Dose is computed by evaluating 3D integrals of DPB dose. The DPB dose computation model has been applied to calculate dose distributions for 60Co and accelerator beams. Calculations for the latter are performed using energy spectra generated with the Monte Carlo program. To predict dose distributions near the beam boundaries defined by the collimation system as well as blocks, we utilize the angular distribution of incident photons. Inhomogeneities are taken into account (1) by attenuating the primary photon fluence exponentially utilizing the average total linear attenuation coefficient of intervening tissue, (2) by multiplying photon fluence by the linear attenuation coefficient to yield the number of collisions in the scattering volume, and (3) by scaling the path between the scattering volume element and the computation point by an effective density.