Reading .dcm, RP.dcm, RD.dcm and RS.dcm

Flair
1

Dear Experts,
I have .dcm file of a patient along with its RP.dcm (machine specific parameters), RD.dcm(dose information) and RS.dcm(structure information).

Can I import and read all these files in FLUKA? Kindly advise me on how to do that.

Thanking you in advance.

3

Dear @ArghyaC,
I believe the easiest way is to use flair with its DICOM functionality. When you open new project in Flair look for DICOM tab:

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When you are in this tab you can easily import all your DICOM files with “Add”.Full list should include CT, Structures, Plan and Dose:
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I suspect that you plan to run simulation based on your DICOM files. Then I would summarize few steps you need to perform to prepare the Fluka input file. I suggest you to create first new input file from template eg. “Voxel”, and then create/update some input cards based on your DICOM files:
x From your CT you have to create voxel geometry -you will need .mat file translating HU to materials for your CT(1), then give your voxel file a name (no more than 6 letters)(2), create the file (3), and update your input file with it (4).
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x Then go to your plan and update your input with it (“Create”)
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x For your dose you should probably create scoring cards.
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You can also export your dose to .bnn format here or open RTViewer when you can compare reference DICOM dose with your results.
x Structure set needs to be opened to calculate volumes of imported structures and then to obtain this information for DVHs in RTViewer.
I hope it will speed up your adventure of using DICOM in Fluka :smile:

4

Thank you very much. Now the steps are almost clear to me.
Can you kindly clarify my few more queries:

  1. Should I prepare custom .mat file for this ?
  2. From the RTPLAN file, I will get necessary beam parameters. Now, I have to create similar beam using FLUKA BEAM card. Am I correct ?
  3. Suppose, SOBP beam is used. Is there any way where from I will get the energy of each beamlet and its corresponding beam-on time ?
  4. For, IMPT, fluence is an important parameter. Can I get the fluence information from these imported files ?

My concern is that, if all the beam parameters in TPS and FLUKA are not similar, we will not be able to compare the both.

Waiting for your suggestions.

Thanking you in advance

5

Hi @ArghyaC

  1. there are two examples of .mat files that can be found on the flair download site<
    Of course you can edit them and modify as you wish
  2. The RTPLANner of flair will automatically create the SPOTBEAM cards to reflect the RTPLAN beam paramters
  3. If you have a SOBP you need either create the beamline elements so as FLUKA to simulate the SOBP or make a custom source routine
  4. I am not sure what you mean, however fluence you can get with the standard FLUKA scoring cards. Please read the scoring lecture on how to
6

Thank you very much for your reply. I am able to create SPOTBEAM as per your suggestions.

Now if you clarify the following, it will be a great help to me.

  1. While I am creating BEAM from RTPLAN, it is asking some beam modelling in .dat file. Where I am supposed to supply energy, energy spread, FWHM , NP/MU etc etc. What is the parameter “NP/MU” and how it will be calculated from TPS data ?

  2. As per my understanding, the SPOTBEAM card will take care about the field size and all. Am I correct?

  3. As per my understanding, it does not consider MLC file in the case of photon beam. Then what is the alternative methods. As without MLC, photon-based radiotherapy treatment is almost impossible as per current practice.

Waiting for suggestions. Thanking you in advance.

7

  1. NP = number of particles
    MU = monitor units
    In Photon plans the intensity is typically provided with MU. However FLUKA needs the number of particles. Flair is not able to do this conversion so the user should provide per beam energy the conversion factor MU → NP

  2. Correct, however the individual spot sizes are not provided inside the RTPLAN so flair will create them from the beam parameter file #1

  3. As far as I know there is no DICOM (or some standard) description of the MLC information so as flair to generate automatically the geometry. If you are aware of such information it would be interesting to let us know, so we could implement it inside flair.

8

Thank you for your reply.

Is there any particular way using which I can calculate NP/MU conversion factor for a given beam energy.
From LINAC, we will get the parameter such as beam current, field size, output (which is typically tuned as 1 MU = 1 cGy). Using these parameters, how to calculate the NP/MU conversion factor ?
Any example or documents will be helpful for me.
Thanking you in advance.

9

Since the NP/MU is facility/setup depended, I would guess you need to simulate with FLUKA the full calibration setup including the monitor, start with the LINAC beam and score the dose on the monitor per primary and per beam energy. Then using the above tuning you can convert it to NP/MU.

10

Thank you for the reply.
For proton beam, is there any alternative way (without simulation of the treatment head) to calculate the NP/MU value ?

11

Maybe, but I don’t know an alternative