GATE workshop @ IEEE NSS MIC RTSD conference 2024
The GATE toolkit has been in the research landscape for almost 20 years. This open-source software is designed to help researchers and engineers to perform a large range of Monte Carlo simulations in the medical physics field: PET, SPECT, Compton Camera, CT, CBCT (Cone-Beam CT) and radiation therapies.
The first publication on PET and SPECT developments has been published in 2004, the evolution towards radiation therapy in 2011, some extensions to other dosimetry applications in 2014 and, more recently in 2021, a specific topic for emission tomography imaging. A third long-term project has started, aiming to completely rethink the way the simulations are described by the user. It has been decided to investigate whether simulations can be directly described in Python instead of macro files. GATE 10 is currently showing the feasibility of such an approach. The mechanism is based on the Geant4 python binding thanks to pybind11 that exposes to Python a fraction of the Geant4 API.
The first public release of this approach will be proposed in September 2024. We encourage our community of users to participate in our annual workshop, the objectives will be to better understand the latest innovative applications in the field of imaging, to identify certain limits and to propose solutions adapted to the improvement of simulation practices.
The OpenGATE collaboration
