__NOTOC__ The EGS (Electron Gamma Shower) computer code system is a general purpose package for the

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo ( ; ; or colloquially ; , ; ) is an official administrative area of Monaco, specifically the Ward (country subdivision), ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Informally, the name also refers to ...

simulation of the coupled transport of

electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...

s and

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...

s in an arbitrary geometry for particles with energies from a few keV up to several hundreds of GeV. It originated at

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored ...

but

National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; ) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development. It is the largest federal research and development organization in Canada. Th ...

and KEK have been involved in its development since the early 80s. Development of the original EGS code ended with version EGS4. Since then two groups have re-written the code with new physics: * EGSnrc, maintained by the Ionizing Radiation Standards Group, Measurement Science and Standards,

* EGS5, maintained by KEK, the Japanese

particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

research facility.

EGSnrc

EGSnrc is a general-purpose software toolkit that can be applied to build Monte Carlo simulations of coupled electron-photon transport, for particle energies ranging from 1 keV to 10 GeV. It is widely used internationally in a variety of radiation-related fields. The EGSnrc implementation improves the accuracy and precision of the charged particle transport mechanics and the atomic scattering cross-section data. The charged particle multiple scattering algorithm allows for large step sizes without sacrificing accuracy - a key feature of the toolkit that leads to fast simulation speeds. EGSnrc also includes a C++ class library called egs++ that can be used to model elaborate geometries and particle sources. EGSnrc is open source and distributed on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

under the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

. Download EGSnrc for free, submit bug reports, and contribute pull requests on a group GitHub page. The documentation for EGSnrc is also available online. EGSnrc is distributed with a wide range of applications that utilize the radiation transport physics to calculate specific quantities. These codes have been developed by numerous authors over the lifetime of EGSnrc to support the large user community. It is possible to calculate quantities such as

absorbed dose Absorbed dose is a dose quantity which represents the specific energy (energy per unit mass) deposited by ionizing radiation in living matter. Absorbed dose is used in the calculation of dose uptake in living tissue in both radiation protecti ...

kerma Kerma was the capital city of the Kerma culture, which was founded in present-day Sudan before 3500 BC. Kerma is one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nubia. It has produced decades of extensive excavations and research, including t ...

, particle fluence, and much more, with complex geometrical conditions. One of the most well-known EGSnrc applications is BEAMnrc, which was developed as part of the OMEGA project. This was a collaboration between the

and a research group at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

. All types of medical linear accelerators can be modelled using the BEAMnrc's component module system.

References

External links

NRC-CNRC page for EGSnrc

KEK page for EGS5

EGSnrc Github page

EGSnrc online documentation

EGSnrc subreddit
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EGSnrc

See also

References

External links