Abstract
Recent developments in radiation therapy have been focused on applications of charged particles, especially—protons. Proton therapy can allow higher dose conformality compared to conventional radiation therapy. Dose calculations have an integral role in the successful application of proton therapy. Over the years several dose calculation methods have been proposed in proton therapy. A common characteristic of all these methods is their extensive computational burden. One way to ameliorate that issue is the parallelization of the algorithm. Graphics processing units (GPUs) have recently been employed to accelerate the proton dose calculation process. Pencil-beam dose calculation algorithms for proton therapy have been widely utilized in clinical routine for treatment planning purposes in most clinical settings, due to their simplicity of calculation scheme and acceptable accuracy. In the current study a GPU-based pencil beam algorithm for dose calculations with protons is proposed. The studies indicated a maximum speedup factor of \(\sim \)127 in a homogeneous phantom.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Wilson, R.R.: Radiological use of fast protons. Radiology 47, 487–91 (1946)
Lawrence, J.H., Tobias, C.A., Born, J.L., Mc, C.R., Roberts, J.E., Anger, H.O., Low-Beer, B.V., Huggins, C.B.: Pituitary irradiation with high-energy proton beams: a preliminary report. Cancer Res. 18, 121–34 (1958)
Koehler, A.M., Preston, W.M.: Protons in radiation therapy. Comparative dose distributions for protons, photons, and electrons. Radiology 104, 191–195 (1972)
Lomax, A.J., Boehringer, T., Coray, A., Egger, E., Goitein, G., Grossmann, M., Juelke, P., Lin, S., Pedroni, E., Rohrer, B., Roser, W., Rossi, B., Siegenthaler, B., Stadelmann, O., Stauble, H., Vetter, C., Wisser, L.: Intensity modulated proton therapy: a clinical example. Med. Phys. 28, 317–324 (2001)
Oelfke, U., Bortfeld, T.: Inverse planning for photon and proton beams. Med. Dosim. 26, 113–124 (2001)
Paganetti, H., Jiang, H., Trofimov, A.: 4D Monte Carlo simulation of proton beam scanning: modelling of variations in time and space to study the interplay between scanning pattern and time-dependent patient geometry. Phys. Med. Biol. 50, 983–990 (2005)
Kang, Y., Zhang, X., Chang, J.Y., Wang, H., Wei, X., Liao, Z., Komaki, R., Cox, J.D., Balter, P.A., Liu, H., Zhu, X.R., Mohan, R., Dong, L.: 4D proton treatment planning strategy for mobile lung tumors. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 67, 906–914 (2007)
Kohno, R., Hotta, K., Nishioka, S., Matsubara, K., Tansho, R., Suzuki, T.: Clinical implementation of a GPU-based simplified Monte Carlo method for a treatment planning system of proton beam therapy. Phys. Med. Biol. 56, N287–294 (2011)
Yepes, P.P., Mirkovic, D., Taddei, P.J.: A GPU implementation of a track-repeating algorithm for proton radiotherapy dose calculations. Phys. Med. Biol. 55, 7107–7120 (2010)
Yepes, P.P., Brannan, T., Huang, J., Mirkovic, D., Newhauser, W.D., Taddei, P.J., Titt, U.: Application of a fast proton dose calculation algorithm to a thorax geometry. Radiat. Meas. 45, 1367–1368 (2010)
Gu, X., Choi, D., Men, C., Pan, H., Majumdar, A., Jiang, S.B.: GPU-based ultra-fast dose calculation using a finite size pencil beam model. Phys. Med. Biol. 54, 6287–6297 (2009)
Fujimoto, R., Kurihara, T., Nagamine, Y.: GPU-based fast pencil beam algorithm for proton therapy. Phys. Med. Biol. 56, 1319–1328 (2011)
Sanchez-Parcerisa, D., Kondrla, M., Shaindlin, A., Carabe, A.: FoCa: a modular treatment planning system for proton radiotherapy with research and educational purposes. Phys. Med. Biol. 59, 7341–7460 (2014)
Bortfeld, T.: An analytical approximation of the Bragg curve for therapeutic proton beams. Med. Phys. 24, 2024–2033 (1997)
Raju, M.R.: Heavy Particle Radiotherapy (1980)
Lee, M., Nahum, A., Webb, S.: An empirical method to build up a model of proton dose distribution for a radiotherapy treatment planning package. Phys. Med. Biol. 38, 989–998 (1993)
Bortfeld, T., Schlegel, W.: An analytical approximation of depth-dose distributions for therapeutic proton beams. Phys. Med. Biol. 41, 1331–1339 (1996)
Chen, G.T., Singh, R.P., Castro, J.R., Lyman, J.T., Quivey, J.M.: Treatment planning for heavy ion radiotherapy. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 5, 1809–1819 (1979)
Hogstrom, K.R., Mills, M.D., Almond, P.R.: Electron beam dose calculations. Phys. Med. Biol. 26, 445–459 (1981)
Hong, L., Goitein, M., Bucciolini, M., Comiskey, R., Gottschalk, B., Rosenthal, S., Serago, C., Urie, M.: A pencil beam algorithm for proton dose calculations. Phys. Med. Biol. 41, 1305–1330 (1996)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kalantzis, G., Leventouri, T., Tachibana, H., Shang, C. (2016). A GPU-Based Pencil Beam Algorithm for Dose Calculations in Proton Radiation Therapy. In: Lee, R. (eds) Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing 2015. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 612. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23509-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23509-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23508-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23509-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)