Assesing an accelerator design for treating different tumor targets

MARIA S. HERRERA; SARA J. GONZÁLEZ; DANIEL M. MINSKY; ANDRÉS J. KREINER

Taiwán

Congreso; 6th Young re- searchers Boron Neutron Capture Therapy; 2011

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) has been used clinically in several countries to treat patients with different pathologies, such as, high-grade gliomas, metastatic and cutaneous melanoma, head and neck tumors, mesothelioma, among others. Considerable effort is going into the development of an accelerator-based neutron source in Argentina for such a therapy. It is expected that this system will be used for many different BNCT treatments and experimental purposes. In this work an evaluation of an actual accelerator design is performed to evaluate its applicability in different tumor targets. The performance of the proposed design was assessed using imaging studies of real patients through treatment planning and Monte Carlo simulations. According to clinical protocols, dosimetric comparisons between accelerator and reactor-based treatments for different tumor targets are performed.