Monte Carlo modelling of radiation transport in voxel geometries with applications to dosimetry and medical physics

The thesis presents a methodology for solving the radiation transport problem in a complex voxel-based geometry with Monte Carlo modelling, in a computational dosimetry framework. The work was done at the ENEA research centres, Bologna. To achieve this goal, I realized: (i) the design of voxel models, tissue-indexed, suitable to be used with a particle transport code, starting from medical CT image data; (ii) the transferring of the models into the Monte Carlo code MCNP/X, based on a suitable patch designed for extending the capabilities of the code. The methodology allows the transferring an image dataset into Monte Carlo geometry directly from CT files without conversion of the voxel array into a standard MCNP input (geometry described by analytic functions). Applications of the method to dosimetry, including the benchmarking bwtween experimental measurements and numerical simulation, are shown.