Application of GEANT4 radiation transport toolkit to dose calculations in anthropomorphic phantoms

In this paper we present the implementation of a dose calculation application, based on the GEANT4 Monte Carlo toolkit. Validation studies were performed with an homogeneous water phantom and an Alderson--Rando anthropomorphic phantom both irradiated with high--energy photon beams produced by a clinical linear accelerator. As input, this tool requires computer tomography images for automatic codification of voxel based geometries and phase space distributions to characterize the incident radiation field. Simulation results were compared with ionization chamber, thermoluminescent dosimetry data and commercial treatment planning system calculations. In homogeneous water phantom, overall agreement with measurements were within 1--2%. For anthropomorphic simulated setups (thorax and head irradiation) mean differences between GEANT4 and TLD measurements were less than 2%. Significant differences between GEANT4 and a semi--analytical algorithm implemented in the treatment planning system, were found in low density regions, such as air cavities with strong electronic disequilibrium.