COMPARISON BETWEEN COMPUTER SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL DATA FOR CARBON ION RANGES IN HOMOGENEOUS PHANTOMS USING THE RTS&T PARTICLE AND ION TRANSPORT CODE SYSTEM

Abstract

Lately, beams of heavy charged particles, e.g., protons and carbon ions, have found wide application in radiation therapy of oncological diseases owing to the fundamental possibility of qualitative im-provement of the spatial dose distributions when compared to sources of electrons and γ-rays conven-tionally used in radiation therapy, which makes it possible to radically decrease the radiation absorbed dose of the undamaged regions of the tissue adjacent to a tumor. In this paper a results of computer simulation are compared with experimental data for carbon ion carbon ion ranges in homogeneous phantoms using the RTS&T, FLUKA and MCNPX Monte Carlo multi-particle particle and ion transport code systems. Calculations of the main microdosimetric characteristics for cellular structures placed in homogeneous water phantoms are shown: average dose, linear energy transfer (LET), relative biological efficacy (RBE) and biological dose based on the Microbiological Kinetic Model (MKM) within software complex RTS&T. Calculations were made for the beam of 12C6+ ions with the energy of 454 MeV/u. Experimental data were obtained at the Temporary Radiobiological Stand of the U-70 accelerator complex at the Institute of High Energy Physics NRC "Kurchatov Institute", Protvino.