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A dose point kernel database using GATE Monte Carlo simulation toolkit for nuclear medicine applications: comparison with other Monte Carlo codes.

PURPOSE
GATE is a Monte Carlo simulation toolkit based on the Geant4 package, widely used for many medical physics applications, including SPECT and PET image simulation and more recently CT image simulation and patient dosimetry. The purpose of the current study was to calculate dose point kernels (DPKs) using GATE, compare them against reference data, and finally produce a complete dataset of the total DPKs for the most commonly used radionuclides in nuclear medicine.


METHODS
Patient-specific absorbed dose calculations can be carried out using Monte Carlo simulations. The latest version of GATE extends its applications to Radiotherapy and Dosimetry. Comparison of the proposed method for the generation of DPKs was performed for (a) monoenergetic electron sources, with energies ranging from 10 keV to 10 MeV, (b) beta emitting isotopes, e.g., (177)Lu, (90)Y, and (32)P, and (c) gamma emitting isotopes, e.g., (111)In, (131)I, (125)I, and (99m)Tc. Point isotropic sources were simulated at the center of a sphere phantom, and the absorbed dose was stored in concentric spherical shells around the source. Evaluation was performed with already published studies for different Monte Carlo codes namely MCNP, EGS, FLUKA, ETRAN, GEPTS, and PENELOPE. A complete dataset of total DPKs was generated for water (equivalent to soft tissue), bone, and lung. This dataset takes into account all the major components of radiation interactions for the selected isotopes, including the absorbed dose from emitted electrons, photons, and all secondary particles generated from the electromagnetic interactions.


RESULTS
GATE comparison provided reliable results in all cases (monoenergetic electrons, beta emitting isotopes, and photon emitting isotopes). The observed differences between GATE and other codes are less than 10% and comparable to the discrepancies observed among other packages. The produced DPKs are in very good agreement with the already published data, which allowed us to produce a unique DPKs dataset using GATE. The dataset contains the total DPKs for (67)Ga, (68)Ga, (90)Y, (99m)Tc, (111)In, (123)I, (124)I, (125)I, (131)I, (153)Sm, (177)Lu (186)Re, and (188)Re generated in water, bone, and lung.


CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the authors have checked GATE's reliability for absorbed dose calculation when transporting different kind of particles, which indicates its robustness for dosimetry applications. A novel dataset of DPKs is provided, which can be applied in patient-specific dosimetry using analytical point kernel convolution algorithms.