Extension of the Particle Therapy Simulation Framework to Hospital Information Systems and Multi-grid Environments

The Particle Therapy Simulation Framework (PTSIM) is a Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation framework for particle therapy. The PTSIM provides a common platform to model a beam delivery system and a treatment head with patient data obtained from CT images. The PTSIM had already supported three Japanese proton and ion therapy facilities and three more in other countries The PTSIM allows particle therapy clinicians or researchers to simulate their own facility or an envisioned facility without requiring Geant4 expertise or programming. While Monte Carlo simulation is believed to be the most reliable method of dose calculation in particle therapy, the calculation time is critical in performing the simulation with sufficient statistical accuracy for clinical applications. There-fore, adopting a high-performance computing environment, such as a grid, is essential. In order to provide users with better usability and computer resources, we have developed an extension of the PTSIM in order to coordinate with hospital information systems and multi-grid environments. The extension consists of the PTSIM Web Interface for configuring the PTSIM, the DICOM-RT interface for communicating with a hospital information system of a particle therapy facility, and a Universal Grid Interface for performing a simulation in a multi-grid environment. In the present paper, we describe these three key components in detail.