• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.50-57
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• 2022

Background: There are several proton therapy facilities in operation or planned in Taiwan, and these facilities are anticipated to not only treat cancer but also provide beam services to the industry or academia. The simplified approach based on the Monte Carlo-based data sets (source terms and attenuation lengths) with the point-source line-of-sight approximation is friendly in the design stage of the proton therapy facilities because it is intuitive and easy to use. The purpose of this study is to expand the Monte Carlo-based data sets to allow the simplified approach to cover the application of proton beams more widely. Materials and Methods: In this work, the MCNP6 Monte Carlo code was used in three simulations to achieve the purpose, including the neutron yield calculation, Monte Carlo-based data sets generation, and dose assessment in simple cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of the generated data sets. Results and Discussion: The consistent comparison of the simplified approach and Monte Carlo simulation results show the effectiveness and advantage of applying the data set to a quick shielding design and conservative dose assessment for proton therapy facilities. Conclusion: This study has expanded the existing Monte Carlo-based data set to allow the simplified approach method to be used for dose assessment or shielding design for beam services in proton therapy facilities. It should be noted that the default model of the MCNP6 is no longer the Bertini model but the CEM (cascade-exciton model), therefore, the results of the simplified approach will be more conservative when it was used to do the double confirmation of the final shielding design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1165-1171
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• 2017

The traditional form of parallelism in Monte Carlo particle transport simulations, wherein each individual particle history is considered a unit of work, does not lend itself well to data-level parallelism. Event-based algorithms, which were originally used for simulations on vector processors, may offer a path toward better utilizing data-level parallelism in modern computer architectures. In this study, a simple model is developed for estimating the efficiency of the event-based particle transport algorithm under two sets of assumptions. Data collected from simulations of four reactor problems using OpenMC was then used in conjunction with the models to calculate the speedup due to vectorization as a function of the size of the particle bank and the vector width. When each event type is assumed to have constant execution time, the achievable speedup is directly related to the particle bank size. We observed that the bank size generally needs to be at least 20 times greater than vector size to achieve vector efficiency greater than 90%. When the execution times for events are allowed to vary, the vector speedup is also limited by differences in the execution time for events being carried out in a single event-iteration.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.67 no.5
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• pp.333-338
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• 2023

In this study, the H₂O reaction with SiO clusters was investigated using ab initio Monte Carlo simulations and density functional theory calculations. Three chemistry models, PBE1/DGDZVP (Model 1), PBE1/DGDZVP (Si atom), and aug-cc-pVDZ (O and H atoms), (Model 2) and PBE1/aug-cc-pVDZ (Model 3), were used. The average bond lengths, as well as the relative and reaction energies, were calculated using Models 1, 2, and 3. The average bond lengths of Si-O and O-H are 1.67-1.75 Å and 0.96-0.97 Å, respectively, using Models 1, 2, and 3. The most stable structures were formed by the H transfer from an H₂O molecule except for Si₃O₃-H₂O-1 cluster. The Si₃O₃ cluster with H₂O exhibited the lowest reaction energy. In addition, the Bader charge distributions of the Si_nO_n and (SiO)_n-H₂O clusters with n = 1-7 were calculated using Model 1. We determined that the reaction sites between H₂O and the SiO clusters possessed the highest fraction of electrons.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.193-204
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• 2019

Reliability analyses of sixteen domestic design cases of open cell caisson breakwaters against circular sliding failure were conducted in this study. For the reliability analyses, uncertainties of parameters of soils, mound, and concrete cap were assessed. Bishop simplified method was used to obtain load and resistance of open cell caisson breakwater for randomly generated open cell caisson breakwater. Sufficient number of Monte Carlo simulations were conducted for randomly generated open cell caisson breakwaters, and statistical analysis was conducted on loads and resistances collected from the large number of Monte Carlo simulations. Probability of failure produced from Monte Carlo simulation has a nonconvergence issue for very low probability of failure; therefore, First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) was conducted using the statistical characteristics of loads and resistances of open cell caisson breakwaters. In addition, effects of safety factor, uncertainties of load and resistance, and correlation between load and resistance on reliability of open cell caisson breakwaters against circular sliding failure were examined.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.291-293
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• 2002

Accurate dose calculation in radiation treatment planning is most important for successful treatment. Since human body is composed of various materials and not an ideal shape, it is not easy to calculate the accurate effective dose in the patients. Many methods have been proposed to solve the inhomogeneity and surface contour problems. Monte Carlo simulations are regarded as the most accurate method, but it is not appropriate for routine planning because it takes so much time. Pencil beam kernel based convolution/superposition methods were also proposed to correct those effects. Nowadays, many commercial treatment planning systems, including Pinnacle and Helax-TMS, have adopted this algorithm as a dose calculation engine. The purpose of this study is to verify the accuracy of the dose calculated from pencil beam kernel based treatment planning system Helax-TMS comparing to Monte Carlo simulations and measurements especially in inhomogeneous region. Home-made inhomogeneous phantom, Helax-TMS ver. 6.0 and Monte Carlo code BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc were used in this study. Dose calculation results from TPS and Monte Carlo simulation were verified by measurements. In homogeneous media, the accuracy was acceptable but in inhomogeneous media, the errors were more significant.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.48-55
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• 2017

Background: Simultaneous detection of neutrons and gamma rays have become much more practicable, by taking advantage of good gamma-ray discrimination properties using pulse shape discrimination (PSD) technique. Recently, we introduced a commercial CLYC system in Korea, and performed an initial characterization and simulation studies for the CLYC detector system to provide references for the future implementation of the dual-mode scintillator system in various studies and applications. Materials and Methods: We evaluated a CLYC detector with 95% $^6Li$ enrichment using various gamma-ray sources and a $^{252}Cf$ neutron source, with validation of our Monte Carlo simulation results via measurement experiments. Absolute full-energy peak efficiency values were calculated for gamma-ray sources and neutron source using MCNP6 and compared with measurement experiments of the calibration sources. In addition, behavioral characteristics of neutrons were validated by comparing simulations and experiments on neutron moderation with various polyethylene (PE) moderator thicknesses. Results and Discussion: Both results showed good agreements in overall characteristics of the gamma and neutron detection efficiencies, with consistent ~20% discrepancy. Furthermore, moderation of neutrons emitted from $^{252}Cf$ showed similarities between the simulation and the experiment, in terms of their relative ratios depending on the thickness of the PE moderator. Conclusion: A CLYC detector system was characterized for its energy resolution and detection efficiency, and Monte Carlo simulations on the detector system was validated experimentally. Validation of the simulation results in overall trend of the CLYC detector behavior will provide the fundamental basis and validity of follow-up Monte Carlo simulation studies for the development of our dual-particle imager using a rotational modulation collimator.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.111-133
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• 2022

The exciting advancement related to the "modeling of digital human" in terms of a computational phantom for radiation dose calculations has to do with the latest hype related to deep learning. The advent of deep learning or artificial intelligence (AI) technology involving convolutional neural networks has brought an unprecedented level of innovation to the field of organ segmentation. In addition, graphics processing units (GPUs) are utilized as boosters for both real-time Monte Carlo simulations and AI-based image segmentation applications. These advancements provide the feasibility of creating three-dimensional (3D) geometric details of the human anatomy from tomographic imaging and performing Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations using increasingly fast and inexpensive computers. This review first introduces the history of three types of computational human phantoms: stylized medical internal radiation dosimetry (MIRD) phantoms, voxelized tomographic phantoms, and boundary representation (BREP) deformable phantoms. Then, the development of a person-specific phantom is demonstrated by introducing AI-based organ autosegmentation technology. Next, a new development in GPU-based Monte Carlo radiation dose calculations is introduced. Examples of applying computational phantoms and a new Monte Carlo code named ARCHER (Accelerated Radiation-transport Computations in Heterogeneous EnviRonments) to problems in radiation protection, imaging, and radiotherapy are presented from research projects performed by students at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Finally, this review discusses challenges and future research opportunities. We found that, owing to the latest computer hardware and AI technology, computational human body models are moving closer to real human anatomy structures for accurate radiation dose calculations.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.21-34
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• 2008

The parallel Monte Carlo electron and photon transport (PMCEPT) code [Kum and Lee, J. Korean Phys. Soc. 47, 716 (2006)] for calculating electron and photon beam doses has been developed based on the three dimensional geometry defined by computed tomography (CT) images and implemented on the Beowulf PC cluster. Understanding the limitations of Monte Carlo codes is useful in order to avoid systematic errors in simulations and to suggest further improvement of the codes. We evaluated the PMCEPT code by comparing its normalized depth doses for electron and photon beams with those of MCNP5, EGS4, DPM, and GEANT4 codes, and with measurements. The PMCEPT results agreed well with others in homogeneous and heterogeneous media within an error of $1{\sim}3%$ of the dose maximum. The computing time benchmark has also been performed for two cases, showing that the PMCEPT code was approximately twenty times faster than the MCNP5 for 20-MeV electron beams irradiated on the water phantom. For the 18-MV photon beams irradiated on the water phantom, the PMCEPT was three times faster than the GEANT4. Thus, the results suggest that the PMCEPT code is indeed appropriate for both fast and accurate simulations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.472-478
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• 2015

The patient dose incurred from diagnostic procedures during advanced radiotherapy has become an important issue. Many researchers in medical physics are using computational simulations to calculate complex parameters in experiments. However, extended computation times make it difficult for personal computers to run the conventional Monte Carlo method to simulate radiological images with high-flux photons such as images produced by computed tomography (CT). To minimize the computation time without degrading imaging quality, we applied a deterministic adaptation to the Monte Carlo calculation and verified its effectiveness by simulating CT image reconstruction for an image evaluation phantom (Catphan; Phantom Laboratory, New York NY, USA) and a human-like voxel phantom (KTMAN-2) (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA). For the deterministic adaptation, the relationship between iteration numbers and the simulations was estimated and the option to simulate scattered radiation was evaluated. The processing times of simulations using the adaptive method were at least 500 times faster than those using a conventional statistical process. In addition, compared with the conventional statistical method, the adaptive method provided images that were more similar to the experimental images, which proved that the adaptive method was highly effective for a simulation that requires a large number of iterations-assuming no radiation scattering in the vicinity of detectors minimized artifacts in the reconstructed image.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.17 no.1 s.104
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• pp.39-44
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• 2006

This paper proposes a method of moments(MoM)/Monte-Carlo simulation and Physical Optics(PO) model to determine Bistatic Coherent Reflectivity of sea surfaces at various wind speeds. For the MoM simulation, a Gaussian random rough sea surface was generated based on the data of Tae-An ocean at various wind speeds and sea surface heights. The numerical results of the MoM/Monte Carlo simulations were used to verify the validity region of the PO model. It was found that the numerical result for a flat surface agrees quite well with the Fresnel reflection coefficient. The validity of the PO model on the rough sea surface is shown by using ray tracing method.