Orthovoltage backscatter simulation EGSnrc or PENELOPE?

[junanzhang]

Hi Experts ,
I am planning to learn either EGSnrc or PENELOPE to simulate photon interaction inside a small animal irradiator. The goal is to calculate backscatter factor for radiobiology experiment. The voltage is 160kVp (5mm Cu HVL) or 220kVp (10mm Cu HVL).
Should I choose EGSnrc or PENELOPE?
Some of latest papers are using PENELOPE simulation. But I can not find any Github or active forum on PENELOPE.
I am a little worried about the learning curve if I choose PENELOPE path.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Junan

[rtownson]

For any general purpose MC code there's a steep learning curve! With EGSnrc we do have a getting-started manual to help you hit the ground running. I suggest installing EGSnrc and giving the getting-started tutorials a try, to see how it feels. Once you actually start building your geometry, feel free to reach out if you need support.

[crcrewso]

The one word of caution I would add as an admin. I havent seen much success with using Penelope in a multithreaded way. If you're simulating a lot of extremely complex work then I might lean to EGSnrc. If you can find a sample Penelope simulation of the complexity and volume that you're intending, run that and see. I personally doubt you will need that level of calculation power with what you've described, but as with most things, test it out, I am often wrong.