Clinical Implementation of a Proton Dose Verification System Utilizing a GPU Accelerated Monte Carlo Engine

Abstract Purpose: To develop a clinical infrastructure that allows for routine Monte Carlo dose calculation verification of spot scanning proton treatment plans and includes a simple biological model to aid in normal tissue protection. Materials and Methods: A graphical processing unit accelerated Monte Carlo dose engine was used as the calculation engine for dose verification on spot scanning proton plans. An infrastructure was built around this engine that allows for seamless exporting of treatment plans from the treatment planning system and importing of dose distribution from the Monte Carlo calculation via DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine). An easy-to-use Web-based interface was developed so that the application could be run from any computer. In addition to the standard relative biological effectiveness = 1.1 for proton therapy, a simple linear equation dependent on dose-weighted linear energy transfer was included. This was used to help detect possible high biological dose in c...