title: Nuclear reaction measurements on tissue-equivalent materials and GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations for hadrontherapy.
abstract: When a carbon beam interacts with human tissues, many secondary fragments are produced into the tumor region and the surrounding healthy tissues. Therefore, in hadrontherapy precise dose calculations require Monte Carlo tools equipped with complex nuclear reaction models. To get realistic predictions, however, simulation codes must be validated against experimental results; the wider the dataset is, the more the models are finely tuned.Since no fragmentation data for tissue-equivalent materials at Fermi energies are available in literature, we measured secondary fragments produced by the interaction of a 55.6 MeV u(-1) (12)C beam with thick muscle and cortical bone targets. Three reaction models used by the Geant4 Monte Carlo code, the Binary Light Ions Cascade, the Quantum Molecular Dynamic and the Liege Intranuclear Cascade, have been benchmarked against the collected data. In this work we present the experimental results and we discuss the predictive power of the above mentioned models.
authors.affiliation: INFN-Sezione di Catania, 64, Via S. Sofia, I-95123 Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: De Napoli
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Romano
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: D'Urso
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Licciardello
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Agodi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Candiano
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cappuzzello
authors.forename: G A P
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Cirrone
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cuttone
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Musumarra
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pandola
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Scuderi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D063193:Heavy Ion Radiotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon