BEAMnrc home page: A simulation system for radiotherapy sources

BEAMnrc: A Monte Carlo Simulation System for Modelling Radiotherapy Sources
Ionizing Radiation Standards Group
Institute for National Measurement Standards
National Research Council Canada

BEAMnrcMP is a general purpose Monte Carlo simulation system for modelling radiotherapy sources which is based on the EGSnrcMP code system for modelling coupled electron and photon transport. BEAMnrcMP is the current version of the no longer supported BEAM (based on EGS4) and BEAMnrc (based on the Linux/Unix only version of EGSnrc) systems. Unlike these earlier versions of BEAM, which only work on a selection of Linux/Unix systems, BEAMnrcMP works on Linux/Unix, Windows NT/2000/XP, and possibly Mac OSX.

The BEAMnrc/BEAM system has been described extensively in the literature and many of NRC's papers about BEAM and BEAMnrc are available as part of the IRS on-line papers. There are many papers written by others who have used the BEAMnrc/BEAM system and these are included in a listing of BEAM related papers. You may also want to see the extensive online documentation.

BEAM was developed originally as part of the OMEGA project which was a collaboration between NRC and Rock Mackie's group at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

EGSnrcMP is the latest version of the popular EGS code system and features much improved transport physics plus the ability to work on all major operating systems. Note that, unlike earlier BEAM and BEAMnrc versions that included a copy of the EGSnrc system, you must install EGSnrcMP first before installing BEAMnrcMP.

There is a collection of accelerator pictures available. This colection is primarily based on using BEAM and the EGS_Windows graphics package Version 4.0, which works on any X-windows system is available here.

The BEAMnrc system is distributed here for free to non-commercial users. It is strongly recommended that you take a course to get trained on how to use the code effectively. Once someone has taken a course, we try to support their use of the code, but we cannot support those who try to use the code without taking a course. The system requirements and the licence agreement under which the code is distributed are given below.

There is extensive documentation of the code which is avaliable on-line using the links given below and the distribution also includes copies of the manuals.

For an independent description of the course by someone attending the 1997 course, please see Geraint Lewis' review.

For a more recent report, see that of Maria Mania Aspradakis who attended the 2002 course, available here.

For those who have attended the BEAM course, the BEAM song will be familiar (its in WAV format and isn't as good as in person! It is also a 7Mbyte download!).

The first course was held in October 1995 at the U of Wisconsin in Madison and courses were held annualy at NRC in Ottawa in October except for October 2003. We will be holding as many courses as needed to meet the demand. We need 15 participants to make the course viable. Thus, if you are seriously interested in taking the course, please contact Blake Walters or Iwan Kawrakow to have your name added to the waiting list.

The course is hands-on and limited to 24 students at most. The tuition ($Cdn3500) represents a small fraction of the cost involved in making use of this code since it will require several months effort by even sophisticated computer users.

Note that use of the BEAMnrc system or its documentation implies acceptance of the licence conditions given below.

Our development and production environment is a cluster of Linux PCs and so the BEAMnrc package should be most stable/feature complete on Linux. The system has been also tested on various Unix systems (Solaris, IRIX, AIX, OSF1, HP-UX). Since the 2005 release BEAMnrc also works on Windows NT/2000/XP and Mac OSX.

The system requires a FORTRAN F77 compiler and some pieces require a C compiler. The GNU compilers are fine.

A make utility is required for compiling. GNU make is better than traditional Unix make versions. We provide a pre-compiled GNU make with the Windows installer.

The EGS_windows graphics facility is now available for X-windows based system with OpenGL or Mesa3D. In particular it works on a Linux system.

We developed most of the system with 32Mbyte of memory but by having 80 Mbyte we get much faster compilations and for in-phantom calculations 128 Mbyte is suggested and our current systems have 512 Mbyte - 1 Gbyte/dual CPU system, just to be sure. That isn't critical after a while, and speed of other calculations isn't too dependent (unless scoring large phantom data sets).

Disk space used to be the big issue. Students here seem to need at least 4 Gbyte (each) to survive, but 2Gbyte can allow some very substantial calculations to get done. However, as the price of disk space falls, this is not the problem it used to be.

As with any MC system, the more raw CPU power the better. We currently use a mixture of 44 Athlon CPUs MP 1800+ and MP 2400+. AMD CPUs seem to run Monte Carlo simulations better than P4 with 2400+ being roughly equivalent to a 3 GHz P4. Much of our early work was done using 200 MHz machines, or even slower.

xmgr/grace

Several of the analysis tools use the graphics package Grace which is widely available for free. There is no Grace version for Windows available. This implies that Windows users will have to modify the output routines of the various analysis programs to produce whatever output they need.

Tcl/Tk

All of the GUIs use Tcl/Tk and wish, a freeware package. The GUIs were developed using Tcl version 7.5, Tk version 4.1 and wish 4.1 or wishx. Version 8.0 of Tcl/Tk can be downloaded from http://www.scriptics.com/software/8.0.html or it can be obtained from a CDROM in a book, for example, ``Graphical Applications with Tcl and Tk, 2e'' by Eric Foster-Johnson, M&T Books, 1997. When you download Tcl and Tk you get two programs, wish and tclsh, supporting script libraries, and on-line reference documentation.

Note that the makers of Tcl/Tk have made no promises of backwards compatibility. We therefore cannot yet guarantee that these GUIs will work for all versions of Tcl/Tk, although we strive to do so in the near future. Version 8.0 appears to work satisfactorily with the current versions of the GUIs.

There is considerable information needed in order to model a linac accurately. A document has been written which specifies what information is needed and is available here.

The licence under which the BEAM code system is distributed has changed as of the BEAM99 distribution. The intent of the licence has not changed, but the words have as the technology transfer people have been helping out.

The BEAM code system (i.e. all pieces of code saying they are subject to the BEAM General License, including routines related to the 1999 and later versions of BEAM or BEAMnrc, DOSXYZ or DOSXYZnrc, BEAMDP, ctcreate and EGS_Windows, as well as the CMs (BEAM component modules), scripts, all the auxiliary routines except those from the EGS4 Monte Carlo system and all associated documentation) are copyrighted material owned by the National Research Council of Canada, all rights reserved.

1) The NRC grants the user a non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use this system free of charge only for non-commercial research or educational purposes. All proprietary interest, right, title and copyright in the BEAM code system remains with NRC.

2) The express, written consent of NRC is required if the BEAM code system or any part thereof is used by an individual or an organization for developing a commercial product or service, or data generated by the code is used to develop commercial products or services.

3) The express, written consent of NRC is required if this code system or any part thereof is to be used in a fee for service application, either clinically or by consultants.

4) The code system must be obtained from NRC. Users may not copy nor distribute the code system or parts thereof.

5) NRC disclaims any warranties, expressed, implied or statutory, of any kind or nature with respect to the software, including without limitation any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. NRC shall not be liable in any event for any damages, whether direct or indirect, special or general, consequential or incidental, arising from the use of the software.

6) This licence supersedes all prior communications, negotiations and agreements, written or oral, concerning the BEAM code system. No amendment or waiver of terms is effective unless in writing, signed by both parties and specifically states the intention to affect this licence.

7) This licence is governed by the laws of Ontario and Canada applicable therein. The user consents to the jurisdiction of the federal court and the courts of Ontario.

Please report all bugs (and corrections if possible) to Iwan Kawrakow (iwan@irs.phy.nrc.ca) or
Dave Rogers (drogers@physics.carleton.ca) Corrections will be patched into the code and explicit mention given in the documentation to the first person providing a workable solution.