Monte Carlo Investigation of the Depth-dose Profile of Proton Beams and Carbon Ions in Water, Skeletal Muscle, Adipose Tissue, and Cortical Bone for Hadron Therapy Applications

Abstract

In this study, the depth-dose profile in water, skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and cortical bone irradiated using incident beams of protons and carbon ions were simulated at different incident energies using the open source software GEANT4 version 10.3.2 via GATE v.8.0. The depth where the Bragg peaks of protons with incident energies of 75 MeV, 100 MeV, 130 MeV, 150 MeV, and 160 MeV in different materials were determined and the results were compared with the experimental data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) database. The corresponding energy for incident carbon ion beam that yields the same Bragg peak position as the incident proton beams were also investigated. The depth-dose profile obtained using carbon ions show better dose conformation, but the presence of dose tail was observed. This suggests that further investigation of the RBE of the secondary fragments is necessary to understand their underlying impact to the carbon ion treatment in general.