KiT-RT: An extendable framework for radiative transfer and therapy

TL;DR

KiT-RT is an open-source, extendable C++ framework for solving kinetic equations in radiation therapy, supporting various numerical methods and facilitating testing, comparison, and development of new solvers.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, open-source framework with multiple deterministic solvers for radiation therapy applications, enabling easy extension and testing of new numerical methods.

Findings

Demonstrates solution characteristics across diverse test cases.

Shows efficiency of different numerical methods in radiation transport.

Provides a versatile platform for solver development and comparison.

Abstract

In this paper we present KiT-RT (Kinetic Transport Solver for Radiation Therapy), an open-source C++ based framework for solving kinetic equations in radiation therapy applications. The aim of this code framework is to provide a collection of classical deterministic solvers for unstructured meshes that allow for easy extendability. Therefore, KiT-RT is a convenient base to test new numerical methods in various applications and compare them against conventional solvers. The implementation includes spherical-harmonics, minimal entropy, neural minimal entropy and discrete ordinates methods. Solution characteristics and efficiency are presented through several test cases ranging from radiation transport to electron radiation therapy. Due to the variety of included numerical methods and easy extendability, the presented open source code is attractive for both developers, who want a basis to build their own numerical solvers and users or application engineers, who want to gain experimental insights without directly interfering with the codebase.