Format/Educational methods: A one day course with lectures and practical examples.

Participants must bring a laptop capable of running TOPAS.

• Mac OSX 10.11 or newer
• Linux Debian 8 or 9 or a Debian 8 or 9 variant
• RHEL 6 or 7 or a RHEL 6 or 7 variant
• Windows with a Virtual Machine system pre-installed and one of the above Linux variants

Course objectives: To provide the background necessary for participants to reliably use the TOPAS Tool for Particle Simulation for Monte Carlo simulation in medicine. Participants will learn the fundamentals of the Monte Carlo method and its application in medicine. They will then learn through lectures and examples how TOPAS provides a simple, effective means to access the Geant4 Monte Carlo toolkit. Participants will leave the course with practical knowledge on how to get started on using TOPAS for their own application in medicine.

CAMPEP application statement: This meeting has applied to CAMPEP for approval of 8 MPCEC hours.

Location: UCSF Parnassus library

2^nd floor double classroom CL221-CL222

530 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94143

Accessibility: The UCSF Parnassus library has a variety of services to accommodate patrons with disabilities. Please see https://www.library.ucsf.edu/about/policies/accessibility/.

Speakers (in alphabetical order):

• Bruce Faddegon, Ph.D., ToPaS U24 PI, UCSF (Bruce)
• Harald Paganetti, Ph.D., Director of Physics Research, MGH (Harald)
• Joseph Perl, Chief ToPaS architect, SLAC (Joe)
• Jose Ramos Mendez, Ph.D., ToPaS Developer, UCSF (Jose)
• Jan Schuemann, Ph.D., Head of Multi-Scale Monte Carlo lab, MGH (Jan)

Introduction to Monte Carlo simulation and TOPAS

8:40 am           Welcome and introductions (Joe)

9:00 am           Review of fundamentals of the Monte Carlo method (Jose)

9:40 am           Monte Carlo in medicine (Bruce)

10:00 am         Coffee break (provided)

10:20 am         Monte Carlo in proton therapy (Harald)

10:40 am         Geant4 and TOPAS (Jan)

11:00 pm         TOPAS basics (Joe)

12:00 pm         Lunch (provided)

Hand-on experience with TOPAS

1:15 pm           Dose, fluence, and LET from protons in water (Harald)

1:45 pm           Linac treatment head simulation (Bruce)

2:15 pm           Generic double-scattering proton treatment head with target tracking (Joe)

2:45 pm           Proton patient dose, LET and RBE calculation (Jan)

3:15 pm           Extensions (Jose)

3:45 pm           Coffee break (provided)

Discussion with advanced examples

4:00 pm           Questions and Discussion (Moderated by Bruce)

5:00 pm           TOPAS advanced examples – (Joe, Jan, Jose, 1 example each, 30 minutes per example)

Evening           Informal after-course social – few block walk to 9^th Avenue (not covered by registration fee)

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