A Monte Carlo evaluation of carbon and lithium ions dose distributions in water

Abstract

Purpose: To compare dose distributions on the central- and off-axis for 12C and 7Li ion beams simulated by the codes SHIELD-HIT (Heavy Ion Transport) and FLUKA (FLUKtuierende KAskade), and compare with experimental data for 300 MeV/u 12C and 185 MeV/u 7Li ion beams.Materials and methods: The general purpose Monte Carlo codes, SHIELD-HIT10 and FLUKA 2008.3d.1 were used for the ion dose distribution calculations. SHIELD-HIT transports hadrons and atomic nuclei of arbitrary charge and mass number in an energy range from 1 keV/u up to 1 GeV/u. Similarly, FLUKA transports charged hadrons in an energy range from 100 keV up to 20 TeV. Neutrons are transported down to thermal energies in both codes. Inelastic nuclear interactions are modelled in SHIELD-HIT by the Many Stage Dynamical Model (MSDM), whereas in FLUKA the Pre-Equilibrium Approach to Nuclear Thermalisation (PEANUT) package which includes a Generalized Intra-Nuclear Cascade model was used.Results: The dose distributions in water irradiated with 300 MeV/u 12C and 185 MeV/u 7Li ion beams were simulated with the two codes. Studies were performed of the energy deposition both on the central axis and at lateral distances up to 10 cm off-axis. The dose distributions calculated by SHIELD-HIT and FLUKA were compared with published experimental data. The dose mean lineal energy , frequency mean lineal energy , dose mean specific energy , and frequency mean specific energy were calculated with the ion track-structure code PITS99 (Positive Ion Track Structure 99), coupled with the electron code KURBUC for the primary and secondary ions average energies at 1 mm before the Bragg peak.Conclusion: The Monte Carlo codes show good agreement with experimental results for off-axis dose distributions. The disagreements in the Bragg peak region for the central-axis dose distributions imply that further improvements especially in the nuclear interaction models are required to increase the accuracy of the codes.