The SIMIND Monte Carlo Program

Medical Radiation Physics, Lund

A new version 7.0 of SIMIND is now available

Finally, the new version is ready for download. I have removed earlier versions that v62 from the download page and these (including v62) are not supported anymore. The following summarise the main changes and can also be found in the version history. For current users, I suggest you make a backup folder of your old simian folders and just redirect the data for the PATH and SMC_DIR to the new simian v70 folder.

  • A new file format for the *.smc files have been introduced. The old smc files can still be used in the actual simulation but the change program will only write to the new format. The intention is that this format will make it easier to expand the files in the future. Please keep a backup of your *.smc file in case you what to run both 6.2 and 7.0.
  • As a concequence of above, the main menu of the change program has been rearranged. Please note that the order of the numbering also has been changed. The possibility to clear all data has been removed.
  • The transmission page has been removed from change and SIMIND and are not supported anymore since these types of simulations are most likely not intereing any more due to the introduction of SPECT/CT. The code for this also to some un-necessary space
  • It is now easier to use fitted functions to model camera specific energy resolution. In the previous version, it was only possible to define the parameters within the simind.ini file but now the parameters can also be stored in an external text file, and the name of this can be pre-defined in the main menu of the change program.
  • The way dynamic planar and SPECT are simulated has been completely re-written. Please read section “Dynamic Imaging” for information about this and the change in the format of the TAC files.
  • Some minor bug fixes and cosmetic changes to the output in the res file.
  • From Windows 10, there are now support for ANSI escape sequences when using the default cmd command-line console program. This allow the use of the new text-based change program to be used (actually the Windows widget version was a work-around). However, this requires an initial change in the Windows Registry system. In the distribution zip file,  the change.exe is now only the text-based version. See the installation information on specific details about the registry-key needed. From this version and on, the GUI-based change will not be supported but it will remain in the v6.2 zip files.
  • The directions of the image-based source maps and multiple-sphere routine have been changed to range from 0 to 2 to be consistent with the directions for the phantom (index 32).
  • Bug fixes

This entry was posted in

Okategoriserade Updates

4 comments

  1. Cade Morgan Johnson

    Hello Dr. Ljundberg,
    I am trying to setup a simulation for an experiment that requires using the ACR jaszczak phantom. What would be the best way to set up the phantom? My current method is to simply input the specifications into the jaszak.inp file, but the available specifications for the phantom are vague and leave room for error. Thank you for your efforts with SIMIND.
    Best,
    Cade Johnson

  2. Michael Ljungberg

    Hi Cade, I am not sure about what you mean by vague. One line in the jaszak.inp is one source, that often are spheres, three first values are the radius in x,y,z of the sphere, next three are the position in x,y,z. The seventh is the relative activity concentration and the eight is the shape (you should use 0 if you what spheres). Of course, if you want to simulate a bar phantom this method becomes complicated. Then I would recommend to do an image of the phantom with a CT and segment out the structure that you want as sources. I have no tools for doing this but in principe you need two images – one where the voxels describes the density distribution and one where the voxels describes the source distribution in terms of number of photons emitted from the voxel location (relative activity distribution).

  3. Ghassan Abojayab

    Dear Mr. Ljungberg,
    I am currently working on my thesis for which I will be using SIMIND. My OS is Windows 11 and I tried to install SIMIND following the instructions given on the “Installation of SIMIND” page on this site. However I can not open neither the change nor the simind executable files.
    To be specific, when I try to open “change.exe”, a cmd window pops up and then disappears instantly, and nothing happens.
    When I try to open “simind.exe”, a cmd window also appears with some info and a progress percentage count, it reaches 100% then the window closes. Due to the scarcity of online resources about this problem, I am sending this message to ask for you assistance. Thanks in advance!

    Best regards,

  4. Michael Ljungberg

    You cant use Explorer and click on the programs to run SIMIND. You have to start a CMD terminal and move to your folder by using the keyboard. This means that you need to learn som of the basic DOS commands like COPY, CD, DEL, NOTEPAD, MOVE,

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