1 GEANT4: Applications in Medical Physics B. Caccia Department of Technology and Health Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Institute of Health) and INFN, Roma G.A.P.Cirrone Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare Catania

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 2 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 3 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 4 Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? Cancer: Ionizing radiation for imaging and for therapy Knowledge of radiation interactions plays a crucial role in medical physics It is the basis of decisions about treatment, and it is essential for understanding medical images Improvement in radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging technology need a major knowledgement of radiation interactions

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 5 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 6 Why GEANT4 The Monte Carlo method has become an essential tool for the simulation of radiation and particle transport problems. It is important not to use Monte Carlo code as a “black box” tool. GEANT4 Monte Carlo code has a toolkit structure that allows to the user an “open box” approach

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 7 Know your Monte Carlo code

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy GEANT4 is developed with a modular architecture (toolkit) and is the ideal framework where existing components are integrated and new (or alternative) physics models continue to be developed. This approach allows the user to understand how the results are produced, and hence improve the physics validation GEANT4 is a toolkit and not a package

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 9 GEANT4 simulates… …a particle step-by-step by taking into account the interactions with materials and external electromagnetic fields until the particle “lives” in your simulated world… …providing the user to access the simulation results everywhere and whenever is necessary to grab the data.

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 10 GEANT4 is a fully OO code in C++

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 11 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy  Geant4-based Architecture for Medicine-Oriented Simulations  Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission  Geant4 European Medical User Organization  Geant4 Medical Physics in Japan  Geant4 North American Medical User Organization From the website GEANT4>Medical Applications

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy GEANT4>MedPhys in Europe The Geant4 European Medical User Organization A meeting place for the rapidly growing Geant4 medical user community of Europe launched in 2006 by Aatos Heikkinen and Pablo Cirrone with the aim of create a common and open space for the European Medical Physics community that uses Geant4 as simulation tool.

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 14 MonteCarlo and Health: Activities in Italy MARS: the Italian forum for users of Monte Carlo radiation transport codes for radiation protection and health applications. ( based on the MCNEG experience …to provide a forum for debate on issues related to the details of the use of radiation transport codes. It is intended to provide an informal atmosphere for discussions of problems as well as for presentation of solutions..... (

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 15 MonteCarlo and Health: Activities in Italy The First Collaboration Network Workshop MARS held in Bologna (Italy) on the 3-4 Dec. 2008

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Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 17 IRCCS: Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (Scientific Institutes for Research, Hospitalization and Health Care)

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 18 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy Need of accuracy in dose evaluation

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy Patients treated with ionizing radiation carry a risk of developing a second cancer in their lifetimes It is crucial to have an accurate computational dosimetric tool (MonteCarlo code) to evaluate dose distribution for emerging treatment modalities (IMRT and Tomotherapy, Hadrontherapy) that can potentially elevate secondary exposures to healthy tissues distant from the target volume. Need of accuracy in dose evaluation

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy Field 3x3 cm 2 Lung Tissue density 0.08 g/cm 3 Radiotherapy: an example “Cancer” Tissue 1.08 g/cm 3

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 22 Content Why MonteCarlo in Medical Physics? GEANT4 GEANT4 for Medical Physics Radiotherapy example Start the tutorial!

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy An example of technology transfer from particle physics to medical physics

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy 24 Tutorial structure A short look to OO C++ GEANT4 toolkit: overview An application to Radiotherapy MedLinac (GEANT4 distribution) Medlinac (user point of view) Launch together a simulation Visualization of the results of simulation Anthropomorphic Panthom and DICOM images Others codes and GEANT4 for medical application

Geant4 School, October 2009, Catania, Italy Grazie e buon pomeriggio!