An energy transfer method for 4D Monte Carlo dose calculation

This article presents a new method for four-dimensional Monte Carlo dose calculations which properly addresses dose mapping for deforming anatomy. The method, called the energy transfer method (ETM), separates the particle transport and particle scoring geometries: Particle transport takes place in the typical rectilinear coordinate system of the source image, while energy deposition scoring takes place in a desired reference image via use of deformable image registration. Dose is the energy deposited per unit mass in the reference image. ETM has been implemented into DOSXYZnrc and compared with a conventional dose interpolation method (DIM) on deformable phantoms. For voxels whose contents merge in the deforming phantom, the doses calculated by ETM are exactly the same as an analytical solution, contrasting to the DIM which has an average 1.1% dose discrepancy in the beam direction with a maximum error of 24.9% found in the penumbra of a 6 MV beam. The DIM error observed persists even if voxel subdivision is used. The ETM is computationally efficient and will be useful for 4D dose addition and benchmarking alternative 4D dose addition algorithms. (C) 2008 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.