Advanced Examples

Geant4 advanced examples illustrate realistic applications of Geant4 in typical experimental environments. Most of them also show the usage of analysis tools (such as histograms, ntuples and plotting), various visualization features and advanced user interface facilities, together with the simulation core.

Note

Maintenance and updates of the code is under the responsibility of the authors. These applications are therefore not subject to regular system testing and no guarantee can be provided.

The advanced examples include:

  • air_shower, Simulation of a Fresnel lens focusing direct or reflected UV light onto a photomultiplier. Object parameterisation and replication capabilities of Geant4 are used to describe the lens geometry. The example is inspired in the configuration of the ULTRA experiment (NIM A 570 (2007) 22).

  • amsEcal, illustrating simulation in the AMS electro-magnetic calorimeter.

  • brachytherapy, calculating the dose of different brachytherapy sources in a homogeneous phantom.

  • ChargeExchangeMC, simulating real experiments in Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI, Russia).

  • composite_calorimeter, test-beam simulation of the CMS Hadron calorimeter at LHC.

  • doiPET, modelling a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner with depth-of-interaction detectors.

  • eRosita, simplified version of the simulation of the shielding of the eROSITA X-ray mission; it demonstrates the simulation of PIXE (Particle Induced X-ray Emission) as described in M.G. Pia et al., PIXE simulation with Geant4, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 3614-3649, 2009.

  • fastAerosol, demonstrating an efficient solution for accurately and efficiently simulating aerosols.

  • gammaknife, reproducing in detail a gammaknife device for stereotactic radiosurgery. In particular, the gammaknife model C is simulated, which is characterized by a symmetrical displacement of the Co60 sources. Dose distributions are acquired in a water spherical phantom using voxelized geometries. The possibility to change the source pattern in order to simulate different gammaknife models is in development and new versions with these additional features will be released.

  • gammaray_telescope, illustrating an application to typical gamma ray telescopes with a flexible configuration.

  • gorad, (Geant4 Open-source Radiation Analysis and Design) is developed as a turn-key application for radiation analysis and spacecraft design built on top of Geant4. Simulation geometry should be provided in the form of GDML. Gorad is controlled by UI commands, and it works both in interactive mode with a Qt window and in batch mode with an input macro file. The current Gorad requires Geant4 version 10.7. It does not work with earlier versions of Geant4. Geant4 has to be installed with the GDML interface enabled. Qt is also recommended for the use of Gorad in interactive mode. The Geant4 GDML interface requires Xerces-C++ version 3 or higher. Xerces-C++ has to be compiled with the same compiler version that is used for the Geant4 compilation.

  • hadrontherapy, is an example for people interested in Monte Carlo studies related to proton/ion therapy. Hadrontherapy permits the simulation of a typical hadron therapy beam line (with all its elements) and the calculation of fundamentals quantities of interest: 3D dose distributions, fluences, and average LET for both primary and secondary particles, etc.. A typical beamline for laser-driven ion beams is also included in this last version.

  • HGCal_testbeam, is an example demonstrating a High Energy Physics test beam setup. It is based on the High Granularity Calorimeter for the CMS experiment and used for Geant4 validation.

  • human_phantom, implementing an Anthropomorphic Phantom body built importing the description from a GDML representation.

  • ICRP110_HumanPhantoms, modelling the ICRP 110 reference computational human phantoms (HG Menzel, C Clement, and P DeLuca. ICRP publication 110. “Realistic reference phantoms: an icrp/icru joint effort: A report of adult reference computational phantoms”, Annals of the ICRP, 39(2):1, 2009). The example calculates the dose in individual voxels and in entire organs.

  • iort_therapy, specifically developed to address typical needs related to the IntraOperative Radio-Therapy (IORT) technique. This technique delivers a single dose of radiation directly to the tumor bed, or to the exposed tumor, during surgery. The idea of iort_therapy is to provide a useful tool for Users interested to radiation dosimetry, dose planning and radio-protection studies in IORT. In fact, the application allows to reconstruct dose distribution curves in water or other materials, to plan dose distribution in the tumor treatment region with different clinical set-up, and to optimize radio-protection of normal patient tissues simulating a composite metallic shielding disc. iort_therapy simulates the collimator beam line system of a typical medical mobile linac, the phantom, the detector and the composite metallic shielding disc. Via external macro commands it is possible to change the physic models, the collimator beam line, the phantom, the detector and shielding disc geometries, the visualization, the beam particle characteristics, and to activate the Graphical Users Interface (QT libraries are requested)

  • lAr_calorimeter, simulating the Forward Liquid Argon Calorimeter (FCAL) of the ATLAS Detector at LHC.

  • medical_linac, illustrating a typical medical physics application simulating energy deposit in a phantom filled with water for a typical linac used for intensity modulated radiation therapy. The experimental set-up is very similar to one used in clinical practice.

  • microbeam, simulates the cellular irradiation beam line installed on the AIFIRA electrostatic accelerator facility located at CENBG, Bordeaux-Gradignan, France.

  • microelectronics, simulates the track of a 5 MeV proton in silicon using very low energy electromagnetic Geant4 MicroElec processes. It illustrates how to combine these discrete processes with usual Geant4 condensed history ones, using different processes for different regions of the geometry and different energy ranges.

  • nanobeam, simulates the beam optics of the “nanobeam line” installed on the AIFIRA electrostatic accelerator facility located at CENBG, Bordeaux-Gradignan, France.

  • purging_magnet, illustrating an application that simulates electrons traveling through a 3D magnetic field; used in a medical environment for simulating a strong purging magnet in a treatment head.

  • radioprotection, illustrating the response characterization of novel solid state detectors for radiation protection in human space missions and aviation. This example shows how to perform simulations for experimental microdosimetry.

  • STCyclotron, simulating the solid target of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), Adelaide, South Australia. The simulation aims at modelling the production of radio-isotopes and undesired by-products.

  • underground_physics, illustrating an underground detector for dark matter searches.

  • xray_fluorescence, illustrating the emission of X-ray fluorescence and PIXE.

  • xray_telescope, illustrating an application for the study of the radiation background in a typical X-ray telescope.