A GPU-based Pencil Beam Algorithm for Dose Calculations in Proton Radiation Therapy

Abstract

Recent developments in radiation therapy have been focused on applications of charged particles, especially protons. Proton therapy can allow higher dose conformality compared to conventional radiation therapy. Over the years several dose calculation methods have been proposed in proton therapy. A common characteristic of all these methods is their extensive computational burden. One way to ameliorate that issue is the parallelization of the algorithm. In the current study a GPU-based pencil beam algorithm for dose calculations with protons is proposed. The studies indicated a max speedup factor of ~127 in a homogeneous phantom.

Keywords

• pencil-beam
• proton therapy
• GPU
• dose calculations.