Calculate Primary and Secondary Dose in Proton Therapy Using 200 and 250 MeV Proton Beam Energy

Abstract

Proton therapy is an advanced radiotherapy technique that delivers a high dose to the tumor, while at the same time sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. This benefit lies in the physical and radiological properties of the protons, such as excellent ballistic accuracy, the combination of low lateral beam dispersion and localized depth-of-depth deposition, which gives proton therapy a high degree of accuracy. The order of a millimeter in the delivery of the dose. However, secondary radiation, mainly neutrons, and gammas, is created by the nuclear interactions that the protons produced in the patient. These secondary neutrons lead to undesirable doses deposited to healthy tissues located at a distance from the target volume, the consequence of which could be an increase in the risk of developing second cancers in treated patients and in particular in children. The objective of this work is to determine the depth doses and the distribution of secondary radiation produced during the penetration of a proton beam of energy of 200 MeV and 250 MeV by the Monte Carlo method into a phantom of water.