title: Examination of fragment dose contribution in heavy ion radiotherapy.
abstract: Heavy-ion radiotherapy is an efficient method for the treatment of deep-seated tumors, because the stopping of ions in a tissue delivers the maximal absorbed dose to the tumor-affected areas with minimal damage to the healthy tissues. However, heavy ions can undergo nuclear reactions, giving products with lower Z-values and hence a longer range in the tissue. This causes a dose increase beyond the mean range of the primary beam. The contribution of such reaction products was examined in an experiment where a stack of tissue-like targets interleaved with CR-39 etched track detectors (ETD) was irradiated with heavy ions. The analysis was performed using a recently developed technique of trajectory tracing, which enables the spectroscopy of fragments with different Z-values.
authors.affiliation: Jozef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Giacomelli
authors.forename: Radomir
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ilic
authors.forename: Jure
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Skvarc
mesh_terms: D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D063193:Heavy Ion Radiotherapy; D010232:Paraffin / Q000528:radiation effects; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D012062:Relative Biological Effectiveness
chemical_list: D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D010232:Paraffin