Comparison of GATE/GEANT4 with EGSnrc and MCNP for electron dose calculations at energies between 15 keV and 20 MeV

The GATE Monte Carlo simulation platform based on the GEANT4 toolkit has come into widespread use for simulating positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging devices. Here, we explore its use for calculating electron dose distributions in water. Mono-energetic electron dose point kernels and pencil beam kernels in water are calculated for different energies between 15 keV and 20 MeV by means of GATE 6.0, which makes use of the GEANT4 version 9.2 Standard Electromagnetic Physics Package. The results are compared to the well-validated codes EGSnrc and MCNP4C. It is shown that recent improvements made to the GEANT4/GATE software result in significantly better agreement with the other codes. We furthermore illustrate several issues of general interest to GATE and GEANT4 users who wish to perform accurate simulations involving electrons. Provided that the electron step size is sufficiently restricted, GATE 6.0 and EGSnrc dose point kernels are shown to agree to within less than 3% of the maximum dose between 50 keV and 4 MeV, while pencil beam kernels are found to agree to within less than 4% of the maximum dose between 15 keV and 20 MeV.

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