Monte Carlo Computations for Radiotherapy with the use of Dedicated Processors

The project we present foresees the development of a hardware processor dedicated to real time Monte Carlo computations for radiotherapy treatment planning. Treatment planning systems are nowadays based on empirical methods which can lead to errors in the localization of the area to be irradiated of the order of centimeters. The use of Monte Carlo techniques permits to reach a more adequate precision but with the drawback of a computing time which is too high with respect to the requirements of a radiotherapy center. We propose to implement time consuming algorithms directly in hardware circuits based on programmable logic devices in order to speed up the computation. The hardware is based on a 'Configurable Computer', a PCI master board housing one or more high performance fPGA and a RAM large enough for the application.