Fano cavity test for electron Monte Carlo transport algorithms in magnetic fields: comparison between EGSnrc, PENELOPE, MCNP6 and Geant4.

Fano cavity test for electron Monte Carlo transport algorithms in magnetic fields: comparison between EGSnrc, PENELOPE, MCNP6 and Geant4.
Phys Med Biol. 2018 Sep 05;:
Authors: Lee J, Lee J, Ryu D, Lee H, Ye SJ
Abstract
A Fano cavity test was performed for four general-purpose Monte Carlo codes, EGSnrc, PENELOPE, MCNP6 and Geant4 to evaluate the accuracy of their electron transport algorithms in magnetic fields. In the simulations, a plane-parallel ionization chamber was modelled as a circular gas disk sandwiched between two circular solid wall disks. It was assumed that an isotropic and uniform line source per unit mass along the central axis of the gas and solid emits mono-energetic electrons with energies 0.01, 0.1, 1.0 and 3.0 MeV at different magnetic field strengths 0, 0.35, 1.0, 1.5 and 3.0 T in the electron transport mode (no Bremsstrahlung). The relative difference between the calculated dose to the gas region and the initial total energy of emitted electrons per unit mass was defined as the accuracy of Monte Carlo codes. In all results, EGSnrc with the enhanced electromagnetic field (EEMF) macro was not considerably sensitive to the step size parameters and showed accuracy less than 0.18 ± 0.06% with a coverage factor k = 2. The other codes could not achieve competent accuracy with their default settings of step size parameters, compared to EGSnrc with EEMF. With the step size parameters carefully selected, the accuracy of ...

Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - September 5, 2018 Category: Physics Authors: Lee J, Lee J, Ryu D, Lee H, Ye SJ Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research