Technical Note: On the efficiency of variance reduction techniques for Monte Carlo estimates of imaging noise

American Association of Physicists in Medicine. Purpose: Monte Carlo simulations require large number of histories to obtain reliable estimates of the quantity of interest and its associated statistical uncertainty. Numerous variance reduction techniques (VRTs) have been employed to increase computational efficiency by reducing the statistical uncertainty. We investigate the effect of two VRTs for optical transport methods on accuracy and computing time for the estimation of variance (noise) in x-ray imaging detectors. Methods: We describe two VRTs. In the first, we preferentially alter the direction of the optical photons to increase detection probability. In the second, we follow only a fraction of the total optical photons generated. In both techniques, the statistical weight of photons is altered to maintain the signal mean. We use fastdetect2, an open-source, freely available optical transport routine from the hybridmantis package. We simulate VRTs for a variety of detector models and energy sources. The imaging data from the VRT simulations are then compared to the analog case (no VRT) using pulse height spectra, Swank factor, and the variance of the Swank estimate. Results: We analyze the effect of VRTs on the statistical uncertainty associated with Swank factors. VRTs increased the relative efficiency by as much as a factor of 9. We demonstrate that we can achieve the same variance of the Swank factor with less computing time. With this approach, the simulations can be stopped when the variance of the variance estimates reaches the desired level of uncertainty. Conclusion: We implemented analytic estimates of the variance of Swank factor and demonstrated the effect of VRTs on image quality calculations. Our findings indicate that the Swank factor is dominated by the x-ray interaction profile as compared to the additional uncertainty introduced in the optical transport by the use of VRTs. For simulation experiments that aim at reducing the uncertainty in the Swank factor estimate, any of the proposed VRT can be used for increasing the relative efficiency