The significance of electron binding corrections in Monte Carlo photon transport calculations
Year: 1984
Type: article
Abstract: Many Monte Carlo simulations ignore coherent scattering events and utilise the Klein-Nishina free electron distribution, rather than the incoherent differential cross-section, for choosing the trajectories of incoherently scattered photons. We assess the accuracy of this model by comparing its results with those of the complete bound electron model (form factor approach), which simulates coherent scattering events, and uses the appropriate bound electron angular scattering distributions. Both analytic and Monte Carlo calculations demonstrate that use of the free electron scattering distributions significantly underestimates the angular distribution of scattered photon energy resulting from low and medium energy photons incident upon carbon, iron, and platinum barriers. In using the free electron approximations to calculate barrier transmission, significant errors occur only for primary photon energies below 100 keV. Implementation of the complete bound electron model reduces the computational efficiency of our Monte Carlo code by only 10-25%.
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology
Authors: J F Williamson, F C Deibel, R L Morin
Institution: University of Minnesota
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2074783229