A Data-Driven Fragmentation Model for Carbon Therapy GPU-Accelerated Monte-Carlo Dose Recalculation

Micol De Simoni; Giuseppe Battistoni; Angelica De Gregorio; Patrizia De Maria; Marta Fischetti; Gaia Franciosini; Michela Marafini; Vincenzo Patera; Alessio Sarti; Marco Toppi; Giacomo Traini; Antonio Trigilio; Angelo Schiavi

doi:10.3389/fonc.2022.780784

A Data-Driven Fragmentation Model for Carbon Therapy GPU-Accelerated Monte-Carlo Dose Recalculation

Front Oncol. 2022 Mar 25:12:780784. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.780784. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Micol De Simoni^{1

2}, Giuseppe Battistoni³, Angelica De Gregorio^{1

2}, Patrizia De Maria⁴, Marta Fischetti^{2

5}, Gaia Franciosini^{1

2}, Michela Marafini^{2

6}, Vincenzo Patera^{2

5}, Alessio Sarti^{2

5}, Marco Toppi^{5

7}, Giacomo Traini², Antonio Trigilio^{1

2}, Angelo Schiavi^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of Rome "Sapienza", Rome, Italy.
² INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) section of Roma 1, Rome, Italy.
³ INFN (Istituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare) Section of Milano, Milano, Italy.
⁴ Department of Medico-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies, Post-Graduate School in Medical Physics, Rome, Italy.
⁵ Department of Scienze di Base e Applicate per l'Ingegneria (SBAI), University of Rome "Sapienza", Rome, Italy.
⁶ Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Rome, Italy.
⁷ INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Italy.

Abstract

The advent of Graphics Processing Units (GPU) has prompted the development of Monte Carlo (MC) algorithms that can significantly reduce the simulation time with respect to standard MC algorithms based on Central Processing Unit (CPU) hardware. The possibility to evaluate a complete treatment plan within minutes, instead of hours, paves the way for many clinical applications where the time-factor is important. FRED (Fast paRticle thErapy Dose evaluator) is a software that exploits the GPU power to recalculate and optimise ion beam treatment plans. The main goal when developing the FRED physics model was to balance accuracy, calculation time and GPU execution guidelines. Nowadays, FRED is already used as a quality assurance tool in Maastricht and Krakow proton clinical centers and as a research tool in several clinical and research centers across Europe. Lately the core software has been updated including a model of carbon ions interactions with matter. The implementation is phenomenological and based on carbon fragmentation data currently available. The model has been tested against the MC FLUKA software, commonly used in particle therapy, and a good agreement was found. In this paper, the new FRED data-driven model for carbon ion fragmentation will be presented together with the validation tests against the FLUKA MC software. The results will be discussed in the context of FRED clinical applications to ¹²C ions treatment planning.

Keywords: carbon ion (C12); fast MC; fragmentation; graphics processing unit (GPU); hadrontherapy; quality assurance (QA).