Representing Range Compensators with Computational Geometry in TOPAS

Abstract

In a proton therapy beamline, the range compensator modulates the beam energy, which subsequently controls the depth at which protons deposit energy. In this paper, we introduce two computational representations of range compensator. One of our compensator representations, which we refer to as a subtraction solid-based range compensator, precisely represents the compensator. Our other representation, the 3D hexagon-based range compensator, closely approximates the compensator geometry. We have implemented both of these compensator models in a proton therapy Monte Carlo simulation called TOPAS (Tool for Particle Simulation). In the future, we will present a detailed study of the accuracy and runtime performance trade-offs between our two range compensator representations.