Comparison of MCNPX and GEANT4 to predict the contribution of non-elastic nuclear interactions to absorbed dose in water, PMMA and A150

Abstract

Proton induced non-elastic nuclear reactions play an important role in the dose distribution of clinically used proton beams as they deposit dose of high biological effectiveness both within the primary beam path as well as outside the beam to untargeted tissues. Non-elastic nuclear reactions can be evaluated using transport codes based on the Monte Carlo method. In this work, we have utilized, the Los Alamos code MCNPX and the CERN GEANT4 toolkit, which are currently the most widely used Monte Carlo programs for proton radiation transport simulations in medical, physics, to study the contribution of non-elastic nuclear interactions to the absorbed dose of proton beams in the therapeutic energy range. The impact of different available theoretical models to address the nuclear reaction process was investigated. The contribution of secondary particles from non-elastic nuclear reactions was calculated in three materials relevant in radiotherapy applications: water, PMMA and A150. The results evidence that there are differences in the calculated contribution of the secondary particles heavier than protons to the absorbed dose, with different approaches to model the nuclear reactions. The MCNPX calculation give rise to a larger contribution of d, t, α3He to the total dose compared to the GEANT4 physical models chosen in this work. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.