Using Monte Carlo Simulated Radiation Transport To Calculate Dose Distribution In Rats Before Irradiation With Leksell Gammaknife?Keywords: Monte Carlo, dosimetry, gamma knife, Dose distribution, physicsInteractive Manuscript
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What is the background behind your study?
Gamma Knife Surgery (GKS) is used with subnecrotic doses for temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) treatment. Rat models of TLE have been used to probe the mechanisms underlying GKS.
What is the purpose of your study?
The irradiation time to achieve the dose to deliver was determined with the Leksell GammaPlan® (LGP) treatment planning system. Since LGP is not designed for such small structures, it is important to calibrate the system for the rat brain.
Describe your patient group.
Describe what you did.
We have used a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) radiation transport scheme, with CT-data as anatomical and tissue specific information, to simulate the dose distribution in a rat brain when using Leksell GammaKnife® (LGK) as the irradiation unit.
Describe your main findings.
We show how dose distributions obtained from MCS quantitatively compare to those predicted by LGP, and we discuss when LGP can and cannot be used for rat studies. The energy deposited, when using the 4 mm collimators, was calculated for targets on both sides of the brain in the dorsal hippocampus, which allowed us to determine the exact time to use to irradiate rats with a given dose.
Describe the main limitation of this study.
This is a retrospective study.
Describe your main conclusion.
The MCS method used in this work can easily be used for future GKS studies on rats when accurate dose distributions are required.
Describe the importance of your findings and how they can be used by others.
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Gamma Knife Surgery (GKS) is used with subnecrotic doses for temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) treatment. Rat models of TLE have been used to probe the mechanisms underlying GKS.
The irradiation time to achieve the dose to deliver was determined with the Leksell GammaPlan® (LGP) treatment planning system. Since LGP is not designed for such small structures, it is important to calibrate the system for the rat brain.
We have used a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) radiation transport scheme, with CT-data as anatomical and tissue specific information, to simulate the dose distribution in a rat brain when using Leksell GammaKnife® (LGK) as the irradiation unit.
We show how dose distributions obtained from MCS quantitatively compare to those predicted by LGP, and we discuss when LGP can and cannot be used for rat studies. The energy deposited, when using the 4 mm collimators, was calculated for targets on both sides of the brain in the dorsal hippocampus, which allowed us to determine the exact time to use to irradiate rats with a given dose.
This is a retrospective study.
The MCS method used in this work can easily be used for future GKS studies on rats when accurate dose distributions are required.
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