Design calculations of an accelerator based BSA for BNCT of brain cancer

Beam shaping assembly study for BNCT facility based on a 2.5 MeV proton accelerator on Li target

“…Both the dimensions and the material composition for an adult head Fig. 4 The profiles of the Φ epithermal , Φ thermal and Φ fast at the beam port of the suggested BSA modeling configurations for the configurations A and B Table 3 Comparison of the proposed facility with some published works (based on the 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be reaction with 2.5 MeV proton accelerator) *Φ thermal (E < 4 eV), Φ epithermal (4 eV ≤ E ≤ 40 keV) and Φ fast (E > 40 keV)…”

“…For these types of cancers, BNCT might represent an interesting alternative therapeutic approach. BNCT is a binary treatment modality: First a 10 B carrier drug is delivered into the patient body toward the final tumor tissue target and when the ratio of 10 B atoms concentration between the cancer cells and the surrounding healthy tissues is large enough (i.e., usually ~ 3-4 for the most common BSA/BSH compounds), the patient is irradiated with a neutron beam inducing the 10 B(n,α) 7 Li nuclear reaction route with thermal neutrons.…”

“…High-flux epithermal (1) 10 neutron beams with low fast neutron and gamma contamination are required, fulfilling the preliminary IAEA criteria [4]. To date, the existing BNCT facilities are based on nuclear reactors, but the scientific community has prompted R&D activities for alternative projects which use accelerator-driven neutron sources [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. In present work, a beam shaping assembly (BSA) optimization study based on a 2.5 MeV proton accelerator and making use of a thick Li target is presented, which fulfills all the recommended IAEA criteria as preliminary in-air figure of merit (FOM) parameters.…”

“…Main results from such a study are then compared with other published BSA facilities which are based on similar accelerator-based neutron sources. In such a study, we have taken into account neutrons produced via the 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be reactions by a 2.5 MeV, 10 mA proton beam into a thick lithium target. All the required simulations for such a proposed BNCT facility modeling have at last been performed with the MCNP5 Monte Carlo transport code [15].…”

“…The calculated thick-target 7 Li(p,n)7 Be neutron source spectrum yielded at 45° downstream the target with regard to the incident proton energy of 2.5 MeV (the spectrum based on the data from Ref [14]…”