Proton-Boron fusion reaction application to protontherapy: a Monte Carlo FLUKA code study

F. GESER; M. VALENTE

La Plata

Congreso; 102a RAFA - Reunión Anual de As. Física Argentina; 2017

AFA

Using electrically charged particles (with emphasis on protons, 1H) for dose deli-very in neoplasic diseases treatments was proposed several years ago [1]. Since then,numerous studies related to the proton physics were developed, regarding the doseconformation and other applications of medical purposes[2, 3]. More recently, thesearch for a treatment system capable of providing on-line and real time monitoring,led to the possibility of using boron (11B) in a therapy with protons to take advantageof the so called proton-boron fusion reaction (PBF)[4, 5]. This technique is capableof making notorious local dose enhancement due to the high linear energy transfer(LET) of the alpha particles, thus being effective in inducing the death of a tumorcell. Moreover, the emitted prompt gamma can be possibly detected for real timemonitoring of the treatment using a gamma camera or a single photon emission com-puted tomography (SPECT). In this work, emphasis is placed on Monte Carlo codeFLUKA. The effect of dose enhancement and prompt gamma production as predictedby FLUKA, is studied for different concentrations of boron in biological tissue. Theprompt gamma spectrum was also estimated and its behavior respect to the differentconcentrations and the total deposited dose was studied with special attention to thegamma peak generated by the 11B(p, a)8Be* reaction when the 8Be* decays.