Ant colony method to control variance reduction techniques in the Monte Carlo simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators of use in cancer therapy

The Monte Carlo simulation of clinical electron linear accelerators requires large computation times to achieve the level of uncertainty required for radiotherapy. In this context, variance reduction techniques play a fundamental role in the reduction of this computational time. Here we describe the use of the ant colony method to control the application of two variance reduction techniques: Splitting and Russian roulette. The approach can be applied to any accelerator in a straightforward way and permits the increasing of the efficiency of the simulation by a factor larger than 50.