Monte Carlo Simulation of a Linac Using PRIMO: User-Friendly Educational Tool”Which Can Be Taken to the Cloud for Free

摘要

PRIMO is a free,self-contained linac simulator and dose calculation software based on the Monte Carlo code PENELOPE 2011.Windows-based,it is user-friendly and does not require any programming tasks by the end user.PRIMO comes with an intuitive graphical interface which guides the configuration and execution of the linac simulation in seemingly natural stages: from the primary electron source in the linac head to the collimators then down to a binned water phantom or patient computed tomography.We report here the simulations done with PRIMO of a 6 MV Varian Clinac 2100 and the dose deposition in a water phantom using student desktop computers with Pentium type processors.The program is then ported to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.Here abnormal program termination due to power outages which is a common occurrence in developing countries is no longer a concern.Without the need to invest in expensive hardware upfront,the PRIMO simulations can be deployed reliably and faster in the Amazon Cloud and which for some time can be free.