Development and validation of a fast voxel-based dose evaluation system in nuclear medicine

PET imaging has been widely used in the detection and staging of malignancies and the evaluation of patient-specific dosimetry for PET scans is important in nuclear medicine. However, patient-specific dosimetry can be estimated only by Monte Carlo methods which are usually time-consuming. The purpose of this study is to develop a fast dose evaluation system namely SimDOSE. SimDOSE is a Monte Carlo code embedded in SimSET with a dose scoring routine to record the deposited energy of the photons and electrons. Fluorine-18 is one of the most commonly used radionuclides that decay predominantly by positron emission. Only a 635keV (Emax) positron and two annihilation photons should be concerned in F-18 radiation dosimetry, hence simulation is relatively simple. To evaluate the effects of resolution, an F-18 point source placed in a 20cm diameter sphere filled with water was simulated by SimDOSE and GATE v6.1. Grid sizes of 1mm, 3mm, and 5mm were tested and each was simulated with a total of 107 decays. The resultant dose distribution functions were compared. Dose evaluation on ORNL phantom was also performed to validate the accuracy of SimDOSE. The grid size of phantom was set as 3mm and the number of decays was 107. The S-values of liver computed by SimDOSE were compared with GATE and OLINDA (Organ Level INternal Dose Assessment) for 11C, 15O, and 18F.Finally, the CPU time of simulations was compared between SimDOSE and GATE. The dose profiles show the absorption doses located 3. mm outside the center are similar between SimDOSE and GATE. However, 71% (19%) difference of the center dose between SimDOSE and GATE are observed for 1. mm (3. mm) grid. The differences of the profile lie in the assumption in SimDOSE that all kinetic energies of electrons are locally absorbed. The ratios of S values of (SimDOSE/OLINDA) range from 0.95 to 1.11 with a mean value of 1.02±0.043. To compare simulation time from SimDOSE to GATE for calculation of 1. mm, 3. mm, 5. mm gird point source and S values of ORNL phantom are 1.3%, 1.2%, 1.2% and 1.2%, respectively. In conclusion, SimDOSE is an efficient and accurate toolkit to generate patient-specific dose distribution in clinical PET application.