The 9Be(d,n)10B reaction as a neutron source for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

EUGENIA CAPOULAT; MARIA S. HERRERA; DANIEL M. MINSKY; ANDRÉS J. KREINER

Simposio; X Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics and Applications; 2013

A project aimed at the development of an accelerator facility devoted to Boron Neutron CaptureTherapy (BNCT) is ongoing at the National Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina [1]. In afirst stage of development, the accelerator will be capable of delivering proton or deuteron beamsof 30 mA at about 1.4MeV which is suitable for neutron production through the 9Be(d,n) reaction.In this context, deep-tumor treatment capabilities of neutron beams produced by this reactionhave been thoroughly studied in the last few years. Our previous studies based on a Snyder headphantom showed very encouraging results for a neutron field produced by bombarding a thin Betarget (8 mm) with a 30 mA beam of 1.45 MeV deuterons.In this work we evaluate the performance of the proposed neutron source for the treatment of areal patient with diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The patient?s head with a 4.2 cm3tumor within the occipital lobe of the brain was modeled by 11025 voxels from a computedtomography stack. The absorbed dose rate was computed via the Monte Carlo N-Particle code(MCNP) and the neutron beam direction was determined based on the location of the lesion usingthe NCTPlan code, a treatment planning code widely used in BNCT. The results derived from thesimulations were assessed prescribing 11 Gy-Eq as the peak dose to normal brain, according toclinical protocols.Preliminary results show that a significant peak dose of 47 Gy-Eq can be delivered to the tumorwith the proposed scheme in a single-field irradiation of 60 minutes while keeping the averagewhole brain dose lower than 4 Gy-Eq. These results are comparable to those obtained with the7Li(p,n)7Be reaction, which provides a better quality neutron field for BNCT. Moreover, the doseperformances obtained with the proposed neutron source are comparable to those achieved inreported phase I/II clinical trials.These promising results strengthen the prospects for a potential use of the 9Be(d,n)10B reactionfor BNCT brain tumor treatments and for the implementation of an operational AB-BNCT facilityin Argentina in the relatively short term.