History by history statistical estimators in the BEAM code system

被引:170
作者
Walters, BRB [1 ]
Kawrakow, I [1 ]
Rogers, DWO [1 ]
机构
[1] Natl Res Council Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6, Canada
关键词
D O I
10.1118/1.1517611
中图分类号
R8 [特种医学]; R445 [影像诊断学];
学科分类号
1002 ; 100207 ; 1009 ;
摘要
A history by history method for estimating uncertainties has been implemented in the BEAMnrc and DOSXYnrc codes replacing the method of statistical batches. This method groups scored quantities (e.g., dose) by primary history. When phase-space sources are used, this method groups incident particles according to the primary histories that generated them. This necessitated adding markers (negative energy) to phase-space files to indicate the first particle generated by a new primary history. The new method greatly reduces the uncertainty in the uncertainty estimate. The new method eliminates one dimension (which kept the results for each batch) from all scoring arrays, resulting in memory requirement being decreased by a factor of 2. Correlations between particles in phase-space sources are taken into account. The only correlations with any significant impact on uncertainty are those introduced by particle recycling. Failure to account for these correlations can result in a significant underestimate of the uncertainty. The previous method of accounting for correlations due to recycling by placing all recycled particles in the same batch did work. Neither the new method nor the batch method take into account correlations between incident particles when a phase-space source is restarted so one must avoid restarts.
引用
收藏
页码:2745 / 2752
页数:8
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