Bragg-curve simulation of carbon-ion beams for particle-therapy applications: A study with the GEANT4 toolkit

We used the GEANT4 Monte Carlo MC Toolkit to simulate carbon ion beams incident on water, tissue, and bone, taking into account nuclear fragmentation reactions. Upon increasing the energy of the primary beam, the position of the Bragg-Peak transfers to a location deeper inside the phantom. For different materials, the peak is located at a shallower depth along the beam direction and becomes sharper with increasing electron density NZ. Subsequently, the generated depth dose of the Bragg curve is then benchmarked with experimental data from GSI in Germany. The results exhibit a reasonable correlation with GSI experimental data with an accuracy of between 0.02 and 0.08 cm, thus establishing the basis to adopt MC in heavy-ion treatment planning. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov K-S test further ascertained from a statistical point of view that the simulation data matched the experimentally measured data very well. The two-dimensional isodose contours at the entrance were compared to those around the peak position and in the tail region beyond the peak, showing that bone produces more dose, in comparison to both water and tissue, due to secondary doses. In the water, the results show that the maximum energy deposited per fragment is mainly attributed to secondary carbon ions, followed by secondary boron and beryllium. Furthermore, the number of protons produced is the highest, thus making the maximum contribution to the total dose deposition in the tail region. Finally, the associated spectra of neutrons and photons were analyzed. The mean neutron energy value was found to be 16.29 MeV, and 1.03 MeV for the secondary gamma. However, the neutron dose was found to be negligible as compared to the total dose due to their longer range.