Contribution of classical and quantum theoretical calculations for modeling ion transport in biological matter by Monte Carlo simulation: applications to proton therapy.

C. CHAMPION; H. LEKADIR; M. GALASSI; O. FOJON; R. RIVAROLA; J. HANSSEN

Salamanca

Conferencia; 10th European Conference on Atoms, Molecules and Photons (ECAMP X); 2010

Ion beams commonly used in radiotherapy have physical and radiobiological characteristics which radically differ from those of conventional radiation beams (photons). Wilson was the first, in 1946, to propose proton beams for medical use in Berkeley. Nowadays, proton beams are employed in many countries for treating particular cancer pathologies. Indeed, in comparison to conventional techniques protons offer an increased biological efficiency and a better ballistic by depositing in particular a large part of their initial energy in a narrow region - at the end of their path- called the Bragg peak region. To model in details the track-structure of protons in biological matter, we have developed a full-history Monte Carlo simulation - called TILDA - which is able to describe, step by step, all the proton induced-collisions by means of accurate total and differential cross sections. To do that, we have developed both a Classical Trajectory Monte Carlo coupled to an over-barrier criteria (CTBC-COB) [1] and quantum theoretical treatments, respectively based on the 1st Born approximation (FBA-CW) [2] and the continuum distorted wave framework (CDW), for describing all the ionizing processes (ionization, capture, charge transfer).