Latest treatment planning systems depends strongly on CT images, so the tendency is that the
dosimetry procedures in nuclear medicine therapy be also based on images, such as magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT), to extract anatomical and histological
information, as well as, functional imaging or activities map as PET or SPECT. This information
associated with the simulation of radiation transport software is used to estimate internal dose in
patients undergoing treatment in nuclear medicine.
This work aims to re-engineer the software SCMS, which is an interface software between the
Monte Carlo code MCNP, and the medical images, that carry information from the patient in
treatment. In other words, the necessary information contained in the images are interpreted and
presented in a specific format to the Monte Carlo MCNP code to perform the simulation of
radiation transport. Therefore, the user does not need to understand complex process of inputting
data on MCNP, as the SCMS is responsible for automatically constructing anatomical data from
the patient, as well as the radioactive source data. The SCMS was originally developed in Fortran-
77. In this work it was rewritten in an object-oriented language (JAVA). New features and data
options have also been incorporated into the software. Thus, the new software has a number of
improvements, such as intuitive GUI and a menu for the selection of the energy spectra
correspondent to a specific radioisotope stored in a XML data bank. The new version also supports
new materials and the user can specify an image region of interest for the calculation of absorbed
dose.
SOFTWARE FOR MEDICAL IMAGE BASED PHANTOM MODELING
