Modelling heavy-ion energy deposition in extended media

Abstract

We present recent developments of the Monte Carlo model for heavy-ion therapy (MCHIT), which is currently based on the Geant4 toolkit of version 9.2. The major advancement of the model concerns the modelling of violent fragmentation reactions by means of the Fermi break-up model, which is used to simulate decays of hot fragments created after the first stage of nucleus-nucleus collisions. By means of MCHIT we study the dose distributions from therapeutic beams of carbon nuclei in tissue-like materials, like water and PMMA. The contributions to the total dose from primary beam nuclei and from charged secondary fragments produced in nuclear fragmentation reactions are calculated. The build-up of secondary fragments along the beam axis is calculated and compared with available experimental data. Finally, we demonstrate the impact of violent multifragment decays on energy distributions of secondary neutrons produced by carbon nuclei in water.