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This book provided a design and simulation method for a passive-scattering nozzle in proton beam radiotherapy. The double-scattering system including the range modulation wheel in a proton treatment nozzle was designed by using the NEU code. The Monte Carlo particle-transport code MCNPX was used in predicting dose distributions in this book. In the passive-scattering treatment technique, a rotating range modulation wheel is used to generate a spread- out Bragg peak depth-dose distribution. This dynamic geometry cannot be modeled in the simulation of MCNPX. This book provided an application of the replacing dynamic by static method to solve this problem. A script mcnp_pstudy, written in Perl programming language, was used to set up a series of MCNPX input files, each of which contains the parameters of a specified step of the wheel, and invoke MCNPX to simulate each problem successively. The other Perl script merge_mctal was used to merge all the separate simulation results into one file containing the simulation results that are equivalent to a dynamic simulation.
About the author
Guan is a Ph.D. candidate for Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University, USA. Guan has been researching proton therapy using Monte Carlo codes MCNPX and Geant4 with Dr. John Poston since 2007. Guan received his B.E. in Nuclear Engineering from Tsinghua University in China and earned his M.S. in Health Physics from Texas A&M University.
