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User guide
Download
RTSim Demo
CT image sets
Prostate1
Prostate2
Radiosurgery1
Radiosurgery2
Shark
This is a beta version of RT Simulator 3D. This software is used for general-purpose visualization and treatment planning for cancers anywhere in the body. It allows physicists and physicians to precisely define and target the tumor volume, and then to design radiation dose distributions which conform precisely to the shape and location of the tumor.
Six overlapping radiation beams from a linear accelerator are often used to treat prostate cancer. This Quicktime movie (3 MB) illustrates the patient setup.
Beam's eye view (BEV) digital radiographs are created for each of the beams. The shape of the radiation field is adjusted to the BEV perspective of the tumor and a small margin surrounding it using a multileaf collimator (MLC). Radiation dose to surrounding normal tissue such as bladder and rectum is minimized.
The high radiation dose in the region of beam overlap destroys the cancer.
This Quicktime movie (2.8 MB) illustrates the process. First, the prostate (tinted blue) and surrounding rectum (tinted pink) and bladder (tinted yellow) are identified. Next, six radiation fields from a high energy linear accelerator are adjusted to the BEV's perspective. A right-lateral field is shown in the movie as well as the surrounding pelvic bone. Finally, the radiation dose distribution is calculated in both 2D and 3D. The 90% isodose surface is shown in the movie as a translucent red shell surrounding the target volume.
This Quicktime movie (2.6 MB) illustrates the patient setup and resulting dosimetry from a combination of arcs and static fields used to treat a lung tumor.
This version has been designed for a PowerMac or MacOS compatible (PCI bus, >=333 MHz PowerPC G3 or G4 cpu running MacOS 9.0.4, Quicktime 4.1.2, Mac OpenGL 1.1.3 and an ATI Rage 128 class 3D accelerator card. You will need a minimum of 192MB RAM and a color display capable of 32 bit color (ie millions of colors). A 17" monitor with 1024x768 or better resolution (in millions of colors mode) is recommended.
The development system is currently a 500MHz/512MB/AGP Radeon PowerMac G4 and Apple 21" display. This is the latest RT Simulator which adds support for importing most DICOM v.3 images via the DICOM_Import extension for Quicktime, "Clarkson" type scatter correction under and around blocks and MLCs, an "Irreg" document, support for "2D" planning, support for digitizing contours & blocks using Numonics and other serial digitizers or a Wacom Intuous graphics tablet: Last updated 4/12/2001.
Click here to download: RTSim3D 3.03b5 (3.3 MB)
NOTE: RT Simulator requires a set of 30 to 100 CT images! Here are some compressed, self extracting archive CT image sets in both .sea and .sea.hqx formats. To import the prostate images into RT Simulator simply choose type "Litebox" in the import dialog file type popup menu. The radiosurgery images are type TX60 (very old, originally from tape!). The shark images are recent examples of simple DICOM images (they were used in the production of the movie "Deep Blue Sea") and can be imported using the built-in ACRNEMA importer. To import the more modern and complex DICOM v.3 images likely to be found at your institution you will need to license the DICOM_Import extension for Quicktime from Escape Information Services in Greece. To import the TX60 and DICOM image sets into RT Simulator you will also need to enable the "Batch load" checkbox in the import dialog.
Demo CT image sets (.sea format):
PostPlanning.sea (26 MB)
Prostate.sea (13 MB)
Radiosurgery1.sea (12 MB)
Radiosurgery2.sea (3 MB)
Shark.sea (14 MB)
Demo CT image sets (.sea.hqx format):
PostPlanning.sea.hqx (37 MB)
Prostate.hqx (18 MB)
Radiosurgery1.hqx (16 MB)
Radiosurgery2.hqx (4 MB)
Shark.hqx (19 MB)
Note: RT Simulator requires Mac OpenGL. Click here for OpenGL 1.1.2 in case you need it. Check the Apple and ATI web sites for newer versions and appropriate drivers for the various 3D cards.
Click here for the online: RTSim3D User's Guide
RT Sim brachytherapy is coming to a Mac near you!
some post-planning screen dumps to download:
Needle localization using CT - Sample1.jpg
3D dose display - Sample2.jpg
3D dose display - Sample3.jpg
Needle localization using orthogonal films - Sample4.jpg
FTP: The latest version of RT Simulator and the image sets are also available for downloading via ftp in "Pub/RTSimulator" at norm28.hsc.usc.edu (IP = 128.125.109.137). If you are using "Fetch" as your Mac ftp client, in the "New Connection" dialog enter Host: norm28.hsc.usc.edu , and leave the User ID, Password, and Directory fields blank.
WARNING You will need the most recent ATI drivers if you are using an ATI 3D card. You can find the latest ATI drivers at http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/drivers.html.