• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
• /
• v.42 no.2
• /
• pp.127-136
• /
• 2008

Monte Carlo simulation methods are especially useful in studying a variety of problems difficult to calculate by experimental or analytical approaches. Nowadays, they are extensively applied to simulate nuclear medicine instrumentations such as single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) for assisting system design and optimizing imaging and processing protocols. The goal of this paper is to address the practical issues, a potential user of Monte Carlo simulations for nuclear medicine can encounter, to help them to choose a code. This review introduces the different types of Monte Carlo codes currently available for nuclear medicine, comments main features and properties for a code to be proper for a given purpose, and discusses current research trends in Monte Carlo codes.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.23-32
• /
• 1999

We have developed a Monte Carlo code, which solves the problem of radiative transfer in anisotropically scattering atmosphere. The radiative code is flexible in handlings of the system geometry, the distribution of scattering particles, and the source-particle geometry. This code treats the case of highly forward throwing scattering. As performance tests, we have compared the result of Monte Carlo calculations with that of Quasi-Diffusion method for a spherically symmetric cloud model.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 2002.09a
• /
• pp.113-115
• /
• 2002

The Monte Carlo simulation method is a numerical solution to a problem that models objects interacting with other objects or their environment based upon simple object-object or object-environment relationships. In spite of its great accuracy, It was turned away because of long calculation time to simulate a model. But, it is used to simulate a linear accelerator frequently with the advance of computer technology. To simulate linear accelerator in Monte Carlo simulations, there are many parameters needed to input to Monte Carlo code. These data can be supported by a linear accelerator manufacturer. Although the model of a linear accelerator is the same, a different characteristic property can be found. Thus, we performed a commissioning process of 6MV photon beam in Varian 2300C/D model with BEAM/EGS4 Monte Carlo code. The head geometry data were put into BEAM/EGS4 data. The mean energy and energy spread of the electron beam incident on the target were varied to match Monte Carlo simulations to measurements. TLDs (thermoluminescent dosimeter) and radiochromic films were employed to measure the absorbed dose in a water phantom. Beam profile was obtained in 40cm${\times}$40cm field size and Depth dose was in 10cm${\times}$10cm. At first, we compared the depth dose between measurements and Monte Carlo simulations varying the mean energy of an incident electron beam. Then, we compared the beam profile with adjusting the beam radius of the incident electron beam in Monte Carlo simulation. The results were found that the optimal mean energy was 6MV and beam radius of 0.1mm was well matched to measurements.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.7
• /
• pp.2516-2523
• /
• 2024

This study aims to validate the dosimetric characteristics of Low Dose Rate (LDR) I-125 source Geant4-based Monte Carlo code. According to the recommendation of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) task group report (TG-43), the dosimetric parameters of a new brachytherapy source should be verified either experimentally or theoretically before clinical procedures. The simulation studies are very important since this procedure delivers a high dose of radiation to the tumor with only a minimal dose affecting the surrounding tissues. GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit associated brachytherapy example was modified, adapted and several updated techniques have been developed to facilitate and smooth radiotherapy techniques. The great concordance of the current study results with the consensus data and with the results of other MC based studies is promising. It implies that Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation has the potential to be used as a reliable and standard simulation code in the field of brachytherapy for verification and treatment planning purposes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.29 no.5
• /
• pp.554-562
• /
• 2012

Processing of Scanning electron microscope imaging has been analyzed in both secondary electron (SE) imaging and backscattered electron (BSE) image. Because of unique characteristics of both secondary electron and backscattered electron image, mechanism of imaging process and image quality are quite different each other. For the sake of characterize imaging process, Monte Carlo simulation code have been developed. It simulates electron penetration and depth profile in certain material. In addition, secondary electron and backscattered electron generation process as well as their spatial distribution and energy characteristics can be simulated. Geometries that has fundamental feature have been imaged using the developed Monte Carlo code. Two, SE and BSE images generation process will be discussed. BSE imaging process can be readily used to discriminate in both material and geometry by simply changing position and direction of BSE detector. The developed MC code could be useful to design BSE detector and their position. Furthermore, surface reconstruction technique is possibly developed at the further research efforts. Basics of Monte Carlo simulation method will be discussed as well as characteristics of SE and BSE images.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 2006.08a
• /
• pp.67-67
• /
• 2006

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.43-51
• /
• 2009

We present a Monte-Carlo simulation code, which solves the problem of dust-scattering in interstellar dust clouds with arbitrary light source distribution and dust density structure, and calculate the surface brightness distribution. The method is very flexible and can be applied to radiative transfer problems occurring not only in a single dust cloud, but also in extragalactic dust environment. We compare, for performance test, the result of Monte-Carlo simulation with the well-known analytic approximation for a spherically symmetric homogeneous cloud. We find that the Code approximation gives a very accurate result.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.35 no.6
• /
• pp.581-595
• /
• 2003

Transport lattice codes require the resonance integral tables for the resonant nuclides where the resonance integral is a function of the background cross section and can be prepared through a special program solving the slowing down equation. In case the cross section libraries do not include the resonance integral table for the resonant nuclides, the computational prediction produces a large error. We devised a new method using a Monte Carlo calculation for the effective resonance cross sections to solve this problem provisionally. We extended this method to obtain the resonance integral table for general purpose. The MCNP code is used for the effective resonance integrals and the LIBERTE code for the effective background cross sections. We modified the HELIOS library with the effective cross sections and the resonance integral tables obtained by the newly developed Monte Carlo method, and performed sample calculations using HELIOS and LIBERTE. The results showed that this method is very effective for the resonance treatment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.7
• /
• pp.2712-2722
• /
• 2023

For an accurate and efficient time-dependent Monte Carlo (TDMC) neutron transport analysis, several advanced methods are newly developed and implemented in the Seoul National University Monte Carlo code, McCARD. For an efficient control of the neutron population, a dynamic weight window method is devised to adjust the weight bounds of the implicit capture in the time bin-by-bin TDMC simulations. A moving geometry module is developed to model a continuous insertion or withdrawal of a control rod. Especially, the history-based batch method for the TDMC calculations is developed to predict the unbiased variance of a bin-wise mean estimate. The developed methods are verified for three-dimensional problems in the C5G7-TD benchmark, showing good agreements with results from a deterministic neutron transport analysis code, nTRACER, within the statistical uncertainty bounds. In addition, the TDMC analysis capability implemented in McCARD is demonstrated to search the optimum detector positions for the pulsed-neutron-source experiments in the Kyoto University Critical Assembly and AGN201K.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 2002.09a
• /
• pp.116-118
• /
• 2002

It has been noted that Monte Carlo simulations are the most accurate method to calculate dose distributions in any material and geometry. Monte Carlo transport algorithms determine the absorbed dose by following the path of representative particles as they travel through the medium. Accurate Monte Carlo dose calculations rely on detailed modeling of the radiation source. We modeled the effects of beam modifiers such as collimators, blocks, wedges, etc. of our accelerator, Varian Clinac 600C/D to ensure accurate representation of the radiation source using the EGSnrc based BEAM code. These were used in the EGSnrc based DOSXYZ code for the simulation of particles transport through a voxel based Cartesian coordinate system. Because Monte Carlo methods use particle-by-particle methods to simulate a radiation transport, more particle histories yield the better representation of the actual dose. But the prohibitively long time required to get high resolution and accuracy calculations has prevented the use of Monte Carlo methods in the actual clinical spots. Our ultimate aim is to develop a Monte Carlo dose calculation system designed specifically for radiation therapy planning, which is distinguished from current dose calculation methods. The purpose of this study in the present phase was to get dose calculation results corresponding to measurements within practical time limit. We used parallel processing and some variance reduction techniques, therefore reduced the computational time, preserving a good agreement between calculations of depth dose distributions and measurements within 5% deviations.