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MO‐E‐18C‐02: Hands‐On Monte Carlo Project Assignment as a Method to Teach Radiation Physics
Author(s) -
Pater P,
Vallieres M,
Seuntjens J
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.4889165
Subject(s) - monte carlo method , curriculum , presentation (obstetrics) , medical physics , photon , consistency (knowledge bases) , physics education , dosimetry , physics , class (philosophy) , computer science , mathematics education , nuclear medicine , medicine , psychology , mathematics , optics , statistics , pedagogy , artificial intelligence , radiology
Purpose: To present a hands‐on project on Monte Carlo methods (MC) recently added to the curriculum and to discuss the students' appreciation. Methods: Since 2012, a 1.5 hour lecture dedicated to MC fundamentals follows the detailed presentation of photon and electron interactions. Students also program all sampling steps (interaction length and type, scattering angle, energy deposit) of a MC photon transport code. A handout structured in a step‐by‐step fashion guides student in conducting consistency checks. For extra points, students can code a fully working MC simulation, that simulates a dose distribution for 50 keV photons. A kerma approximation to dose deposition is assumed. A survey was conducted to which 10 out of the 14 attending students responded. It compared MC knowledge prior to and after the project, questioned the usefulness of radiation physics teaching through MC and surveyed possible project improvements. Results: According to the survey, 76% of students had no or a basic knowledge of MC methods before the class and 65% estimate to have a good to very good understanding of MC methods after attending the class. 80% of students feel that the MC project helped them significantly to understand simulations of dose distributions. On average, students dedicated 12.5 hours to the project and appreciated the balance between hand‐holding and questions/implications. Conclusion: A lecture on MC methods with a hands‐on MC programming project requiring about 14 hours was added to the graduate study curriculum since 2012. MC methods produce “gold standard” dose distributions and slowly enter routine clinical work and a fundamental understanding of MC methods should be a requirement for future students. Overall, the lecture and project helped students relate crosssections to dose depositions and presented numerical sampling methods behind the simulation of these dose distributions. Research funding from governments of Canada and Quebec. PP acknowledges partial support by the CREATE Medical Physics Research Training Network grant of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Grant number: 432290)