egs_brachy

egs_brachy is an egs++ application for rapid brachytherapy calculations for both photon and electron sources. Some features of egs_brachy include:

• Dose scoring via a tracklength estimator or interaction scoring
• Scoring of the spectrum of particles emitted from a source or particle fluence in a voxel
• Primary and scatter separated dose calculations
• Particle recycling for simulations with multiple sources
• Bremsstrahlung cross section enhancement, uniform bremsstrahlung splitting, and Russian Roulette for efficient electronic brachytherapy simulations.
• A comprehensive library of brachytherapy source geometries ,

For a complete discussion of all egs_brachy features as well as discussions about benchmarking and calculation efficiency, please refer to the paper listed below under Citing egs_brachy.

When using source or eye-plaque models from the distributed geometry library, please also cite the relevant CLRP database papers listed under CLRP database references.

The initial release of egs_brachy is version 2017.09.15 beta. We will continue to update and maintain egs_brachy, as well as this manual and the html documentation.

License

The egs_brachy code (all pieces of code associated with the egs_brachy code system) is copyrighted Rowan Thomson, Dave Rogers, Randle Taylor, and Marc Chamberland. egs_brachy is distributed as free software according to the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option), any later version (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/).

Installation

egs_brachy requires the CLRP fork of EGSnrc (egs_brachy branch), not the standard NRC distribution.

Recommended (release tarball): download EGSnrc_CLRP-eb-setup-VERSION.tar.gz from the EGSnrc_CLRP releases page, then:

tar -xzf EGSnrc_CLRP-eb-setup-VERSION.tar.gz
cd EGSnrc_CLRP-eb-setup-VERSION
./eb-setup.sh install --egs-home "$HOME/egs_home/"
cd ~/EGSnrc_CLRP && source ./eb-env.sh

eb-setup.sh downloads the full release, runs EGSnrc configure, syncs egs_brachy to $EGS_HOME, and writes eb-env.sh. Use ./eb-setup.sh update for later upgrades (update --from-tarball PATH when offline). See ./eb-setup.sh help for options.

Git checkout (developers): clone EGSnrc_CLRP, git checkout egs_brachy, git submodule update --init --recursive (egs_brachy is the submodule at HEN_HOUSE/user_codes/egs_brachy), then ./HEN_HOUSE/scripts/configure — or ./eb-setup.sh install --git.

Documentation

Technical documentation for egs_brachy is available in html at https://clrp-code.github.io/egs_brachy/ .

The user's guide (detailed installation and usage) is available here.

A graphical user interface for egs_brachy, eb_gui, is available separately. eb_gui helps set up egs_brachy calculations and includes tools for DICOM conversion and 3ddose analysis. Installation instructions and a user guide are in the eb_gui repository.

Hosted CLRP database papers (pdf):

• CLRP TG-43 low-energy source database (2020)
• CLRP TG-43 high-energy source database (2023)
• CLRP eye plaque database (2021)

Contact

For more information about egs_brachy please contact:

• Marc Chamberland mchamberland@mac.com
• Rowan Thomson rthomson@physics.carleton.ca
• Dave Rogers drogers@physics.carleton.ca

Citing egs_brachy

Citations of egs_brachy should use the following reference:

Chamberland M J P, Taylor R E P, Rogers D W O, Thomson R M 2016 egs_brachy: A versatile and fast Monte Carlo code for brachytherapy, Phys. Med. Biol., 61 8214–8231

CLRP database references

Source models (lib/geometry/sources/)

Dose-rate constants and TG-43 parameters for the distributed brachytherapy source models are documented in the CLRP TG-43 parameter database version 2 papers. Air-kerma strength per history factors are given in the # air kerma: line at the top of each source .geom file (see the user manual).

Please cite:

Safigholi H, Chamberland M J P, Taylor R E P, Allen C H, Martinov M P, Rogers D W O, Thomson R M 2020 Update of the CLRP TG-43 parameter database for low-energy brachytherapy sources, Med. Phys. 47 4656–4669 (pdf)

when using low-energy (¹⁰³Pd, ¹²⁵I, ¹³¹Cs) source models, and:

Safigholi H, Chamberland M J P, Taylor R E P, Martinov M P, Rogers D W O, Thomson R M 2023 Update of the CLRP Monte Carlo TG-43 parameter database for high-energy brachytherapy sources, Med. Phys. 50 1928–1941 (pdf)

when using high-energy (¹⁶⁹Yb, ¹⁹²Ir, ¹³⁷Cs, ⁶⁰Co) source models.

Database: https://physics.carleton.ca/clrp/egs_brachy/seed_database_v2

Eye plaques (lib/geometry/eye_plaques/)

Please cite:

Safigholi H, Parsons Z, Deering S G, Thomson R M 2021 Update of the CLRP eye plaque brachytherapy database for photon-emitting sources, Med. Phys. 48 3373–3383 (pdf)

Database: https://physics.carleton.ca/clrp/eye_plaque_v2 (DOI http://doi.org/10.22215/clrp/EPv2)

Reporting Bugs

Please report any issues you find with egs_brachy using the issue tracker on GitHub

Contributing to egs_brachy

Bug fixes and additional features are welcomed via pull requests on GitHub. Please refer to the EGSnrc Wiki Developers section for general recommendations about making pull requests.

Commit history (change log)

The complete commit history (i.e., change log) can be consulted here.