The Study of Numerical Simulation for Heavy Ion Depth-Dose Distribution

Abstract

In recent years Heavy-Ion Tumor Therapy (HITT) has received a lot of atten-tion as it offers significant advantages for the treatment of deep-seated local tumors with an enhanced biological effectiveness in comparison to conventional megavolt photon therapy or those using protons The physical depth-dose distribution in tissue is characterized by a small entrance dose and a distinct maximum or the Bragg peak near the end of range with a sharp fall-off at the distal edge While tumor therapy with protons is a well-established treatment modality the application of heavy ions is so far restricted to only a few facilities in the world On the physical aspects of HITT accurate determination of specific energy loss (SEL) or stopping power is very important to the improvement of modeling the relative biological effectiveness and developing powerful computer algorithms for treatment planning In this work the relativistic version of the Bethe-Bloch formula is revisited and SEL of heavy ions in water is calculated The SEL for a fast charged particle moving through water is calculated by numerical method The Bragg curve of the stopping power for various charged particles has been evaluated by the first-order approximation and Runge-Kutta method Numerical simulations have been employed to predict the total stopping power and compared with those calculated using the Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) code Detailed analysis and simulation results are given and discussed here

Date of Award	2015 Sept 4
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chi-Chuan Hwang (Supervisor)