ProTheRaMon—a GATE simulation framework for proton therapy range monitoring using PET imaging

Abstract

Objective: This paper reports on the implementation and shows examples of the use of the ProTheRaMon framework for simulating the delivery of proton therapy treatment plans and range monitoring using positron emission tomography (PET). ProTheRaMon offers complete processing of proton therapy treatment plans, patient CT geometries, and intra-treatment PET imaging, taking into account therapy and imaging coordinate systems and activity decay during the PET imaging protocol specific to a given proton therapy facility. We present the ProTheRaMon framework and illustrate its potential use case and data processing steps for a patient treated at the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB) proton therapy center in Krakow, Poland. Approach: The ProTheRaMon framework is based on GATE Monte Carlo software, the CASToR reconstruction package and in-house developed Python and bash scripts. The framework consists of five separated simulation and data processing steps, that can be further optimized according to the user’s needs and specific settings of a given proton therapy facility and PET scanner design. Main results: ProTheRaMon is presented using example data from a patient treated at CCB and the J-PET scanner to demonstrate the application of the framework for proton therapy range monitoring. The output of each simulation and data processing stage is described and visualized. Significance: We demonstrate that the ProTheRaMon simulation platform is a high-performance tool, capable of running on a computational cluster and suitable for multi-parameter studies, with databases consisting of large number of patients, as well as different PET scanner geometries and settings for range monitoring in a clinical environment. Due to its modular structure, the ProTheRaMon framework can be adjusted for different proton therapy centers and/or different PET detector geometries. It is available to the community via github.

Feasibility of the J-PET to monitor range of therapeutic proton beams

“…4, respectively. For both geometries, the relation between reconstructed images and the corresponding dose, production, and emission distributions, was previously shown in Borys et al 2022(Borys et al 2022. Furthermore, in Fig.…”

“…In this work, we exploited Monte Carlo methods for simulation and evaluation of the feasibility of various J-PET geometries for proton therapy range monitoring. We used the ProTheRaMon software framework, in which the delivery of proton therapy treatment plans were simulated, scoring the β + activity produced by protons during the treatment, as well as the J-PET scanner response to the annihilation gammas (Borys et al 2022). The ProTheRaMon framework utilizes the GATE platform for Monte Carlo simulations (Sarrut et al 2022), the CASToR package for PET image reconstruction (Merlin et al 2018), and in-house developed Python and bash scripts.…”

“…The framework consists of five separate simulation and data processing steps. ProTheRaMon offers complete processing of proton therapy treatment plans, patient geometries based on Computed Tomography (CT), the simulation of treatment delivery and intra-treatment PET imaging, taking into account therapy and imaging coordinate systems, beam models specific to a given proton therapy facility, as well as activity decay during the treatment and PET imaging protocol (Borys et al 2022).…”

“…For the cylindrical setup, the H factor increases by about 300% between single (24 modules) and double layer (48 modules) configuration, while increasing only by about 70% from the double (48 modules) and triple layer (72 modules) configuration. We, therefore, consider the double layer geometry as the more cost-effective solution for the cylindrical configuration (Borys et al 2022, Moskal et al 2021d. The triple layer dual-head is characterized by the highest H factor and is constructed of only 24 modules.…”

The OpenGATE ecosystem for Monte Carlo simulation in medical physics

“…Proton range monitoring. Among the applications of GATE for radiation therapy, a newly implemented multi-stage GATE framework, ProTheRaMon [23], joins and extends GATE capability to simulate proton therapy treatments, secondary radiation induction (Sec. 3.2), and PET imaging including reconstruction with CASTOR package (see Sec.…”