A Geant4 based simulation platform of the HollandPTC R&D proton beamline for radiobiological studies

A Geant4 based simulation platform of the Holland Proton Therapy Centre (HollandPTC, Netherlands) R&D beamline (G4HPTC-R&D) was developed to enable the planning, optimisation and advanced dosimetry for radiobiological studies. It implemented a six parameter non-symmetrical Gaussian pencil beam surrogate model to simulate the R&D...

Prediction of DNA rejoining kinetics and cell survival after proton irradiation for V79 cells using Geant4-DNA

Purpose: Track structure Monte Carlo (MC) codes have achieved successful outcomes in the quantitative investigation of radiation-induced initial DNA damage. The aim of the present study is to extend a Geant4-DNA radiobiological application by incorporating a feature allowing for the prediction of DNA rejoining kinetics and corresponding cell...

Feasibility Study on the Radiation Dose by Radioactive Magnetic Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Open-Source Brachytherapy

Background: Treatment of early-stage breast cancer currently includes surgical removal of the tumor and (partial) breast irradiation of the tumor site performed at fractionated dose. Although highly effective, this treatment is exhaustive for both patient and clinic. In this study, the theoretical potential of an alternative treatment combining...

An electromagnetic physics constructor for low energy polarised X-/gamma ray transport in Geant4

The production, application, and/or measurement of polarised X-/gamma rays are key to the fields of synchrotron science and X-/gamma-ray astronomy. The design, development and optimisation of experimental equipment utilised in these fields typically relies on the use of Monte Carlo radiation transport modelling toolkits such as Geant4. In...

In-silico optimisation of tileable philips digital SiPM based thin monolithic scintillator detectors for SPECT applications

Over the last decade one of the most significant technological advances made in the field of radiation detectors for nuclear medicine was the development of Silicon Photomultipler (SiPM) sensors. At present only a small number of SiPM based radiation detectors for Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) applications have been...

A High Count-Rate and Depth-of-Interaction Resolving Single-Layered One-Side Readout Pixelated Scintillator Crystal Array for PET Applications

Organ-specific, targeted field-of-view (FoV) positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) inserts are viable solutions for a number of imaging tasks where whole-body PET/MRI systems lack the necessary sensitivity and resolution. To meet the required PET detector performance of these systems, high count-rates and...

A New Standard DNA Damage (SDD) Data Format

Our understanding of radiation-induced cellular damage has greatly improved over the past few decades. Despite this progress, there are still many obstacles to fully understand how radiation interacts with biologically relevant cellular components, such as DNA, to cause observable end points such as cell killing. Damage in DNA is identified...

Towards photon radiotherapy treatment planning with high Z nanoparticle radiosensitisation agents: The Relative Biological Effective Dose (RBED) framework

A novel treatment planning framework, the Relative Biological Effective Dose (RBED), for high Z nanoparticle (NP)-enhanced photon radiotherapy is developed and tested in silico for the medical exemplar of neoadjuvant (preoperative) breast cancer MV photon radiotherapy. Two different treatment scenarios, conventional and high Z NP enhanced,...

Observation of dose-rate dependence in a Fricke dosimeter irradiated at low dose rates with monoenergetic X-rays

Absolute measurements of the radiolytic yield of Fe3+ in a ferrous sulphate dosimeter formulation (6 mM Fe2+), with a 20 keV x-ray monoenergetic beam, are reported. Dose-rate suppression of the radiolytic yield was observed at dose rates lower than and different in nature to those previously reported with x-rays. We present evidence that this...

Recent progress of GEANT4 electromagnetic physics for LHC and other applications

We report on the recent progress within the Geant4 electromagnetic physics subpackages. Several new interfaces and models recently introduced are already used in LHC applications and may be useful for any type of simulation. Significant developments were carried out to improve the user interface, develop models of single and multiple...