Evaluated teletherapy source library

The Evaluated Teletherapy Source Library (ETSL) is a system of hardware and software that provides for maintenance of a library of useful phase space descriptions (PSDs) of teletherapy sources used in radiation therapy for cancer treatment. The PSDs are designed to be used by PEREGRINE, the all-particle Monte Carlo dose calculation system. ETSL also stores other relevant information such as monitor unit factors (MUFs) for use with the PSDs, results of PEREGRINE calculations using the PSDs, clinical calibration measurements, and geometry descriptions sufficient for calculational purposes. Not all of this information is directly needed by PEREGRINE. It also is capable of acting as a repository for the Monte Carlo simulation history files from which the generic PSDs are derived.

The invention claimed is:

1. A computer implemented process for producing a 3-dimensional map of a radiation dose delivered to a patient, comprising:

constructing patient-dependent information necessary for a Monte-Carlo transport calculation;

executing said Monte-Carlo transport calculation; and

producing, from said patient-dependent information and said Monte-Carlo transport calculation, a 3-dimensional map of the dose delivered to said patient,

wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information comprises analyzing Monte Carlo simulation history files of standard linear accelerators and generating compact, 9 dimensional probability distribution functions (PDFs) describing a patient-independent radiation field for use in said Monte Carlo dose calculation, wherein said 9 dimensional PDFs comprise 7 degrees of freedom, wherein memory storage requirements are reduced and subsequent calculations to select an arbitrary number of uncorrelated samples from the PDF are allowed.

2. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein said 7 degrees of freedom comprise:

spectral energy;

energy fluence (sample weight);

two positional degrees of freedom, comprising:

radius on beam definition plane (BDP); and

radius on virtual source plane (VSP);

an angular degree of freedom;

radiation type (discrete); and

component of origin (discrete).

3. The computer implemented process of claim 2, wherein said angular degree of freedom comprises azimuthal angle on VSP, wherein said radiation type (discrete) comprises photon (x-ray), electron, neutron and proton radiation; and wherein said component of origin (discrete) comprises E.G.: target, flattening filter, primary collimator.

4. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises including in the analysis the eventual effects of some patient-dependent beam modifiers to provide data necessary for highly efficient sampling.

5. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises precalculating the effects of collimator jaws on the shadowing of the beam definition plane to eliminate large portions of PDF from consideration at run time.

6. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises assembling a treatment device description (TDD) from a radiation field PDF and from engineering details of the patient dependent beam modifiers specific to each clinical installation.

7. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises adjusting the PDFs using linear parameters and clinical measurements to give absolute calibration of the radiation field for each clinical installation.

8. The computer implemented process of claim 7, wherein said linear parameters comprise:

a global monitor unit factor comprising a global normalization constant that defines the dose/MU for a 40.times.40 field;

a monitor chamber parameter, radius and position, to adjust said monitor unit factor to account for deviations in calculated output factors from the measured values;

a global and radial energy scale factor comprising multipliers on the energy axis of beam-definition-plane energy spectra; and

a radial fluence scale factor comprising a multiplier on the energy fluence that is proportional to the radius on the beam definition plane.

9. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises storage, access and maintenance routines for use in calibration and dose calculation.

10. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises sampling methods for efficiently selecting random samples that accurately reproduce the original simulations (for unadjusted PDFs) or the actual radiation fields used in treatment (for adjusted PDFs).

11. The computer implemented process of claim 10, wherein said sampling methods are extensible to any radiation beam type.

12. The computer implemented process of claim 11, wherein said radiation beam type is selected from a group consisting of x-rays, electrons, protons, neutron and heavy ions.

13. The computer implemented process of claim 12, wherein said radiation beam type can be mixed in a single TDD to account for radiation field contamination (such as electrons in an x-ray beam (or vice versa), or neutrons in a proton beam).

14. The computer implemented process of claim 1, wherein the step of constructing patient dependent-information further comprises formats and access to the clinical data used in calibration for quality assurance.