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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Dear Gate users,</span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">I’m trying to calculate LET and
average LET(including dose-average and track-average) by Gate. But I met some
problems.</span>
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<b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">First,</span></b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"> I found that in the user guide, it
says that</span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">“</span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">DoseAveraged
(default) or TrackAveraged LET both calculated by using the Geant4 EMCalculator
method -GetElectronicStoppingPowerDEDX</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">”.
But I checked the manual of Geant4(Application Developers Guide) and found that
there is a “</span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">ComputeElectronicDEDX method</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">” in G4EmCalculator class as
shown below:</span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"><img src="cid:34270e5$1$17fd3181647$Coremail$liguangru$impcas.ac.cn" alt=""><br>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">So I think maybe it use </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">ComputeElectronicDEDX method</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"> ,not </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">GetElectronicStoppingPowerDEDX</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">.
It maybe a little mistake in the manual of Gate in my opinion.</span>
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<b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Second, </span></b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">if Gate use </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">ComputeElectronicDEDX method,</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"> the LET is
calculated by kinetic energy of particles as below:</span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">“</span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Instead of computing
the LET as the quotient between the actual electronic energy loss and step
length</span></i>
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<i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">computed during the
simulation, we calculated the LET of the step, L</span><sub><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">sn</span></sub><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">, as the
corresponding</span></i>
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<i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">mean energy loss
per unit path length in the material according to the proton kinetic energy</span></i>
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<i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">at the step. In our
code, L</span><sub><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">sn</span></sub><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"> was obtained with the method ComputeElectronicDEDX() of</span></i>
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<i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">G4EmCalculator
class.”</span></i>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">These are indicated
in the </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Cortés-Giraldo
M A and Carabe A 2015 Phys. Med. Biol. </span><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">60</span></b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"> 2645–69</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">.But I wonder what method was used
to calculate DoseAveraged and TrackAveraged LET in Gate</span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">.</span></i>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">And it’s very
confusing to me. Because it also said in the Gate manual that if I use parallel
computation, there will be </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">“2 output images for each LET actor and run, a
file labeled as ‘-numerator’ and one labeled as ‘-denominator’. Building the
quotient of these two images results in the averaged LET image. Note that the
numerator and denominator images have to be summed up before the division.”</span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">So
why there are 2 outputs? And what are physical meanings of </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">denominator
and numerator ?</span></i>
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<i></i>
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<h2 style="margin-left:0cm;background:#FCFCFE;">
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"><strong>Hope to get the </strong></span><span class="keyword" style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;"><strong>interpretation of these confusing methods.
Any suggestions and answers are welcomed and helpful to me. Thank you in
advance!</strong></span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Best,</span>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-size:14px;">Guangru Li</span>
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<i></i>
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