Ionization and phonon production by $^{10}$B ions in radiotherapy applications

Abstract

The therapeutic use of heavy ions has received much attention due to their physical and radiobiological properties. Thanks to these features of heavy ion radiotherapy, radiation in tissues close to critical tissues can reduce LET while allowing an increase in LET in tumors. Selection of biomaterials closest to the tissue is critical to measure the accuracy of this LET transfer. The accuracy of LET and radiological features measured in phantoms created from biomaterials selected according to the characteristics of the target tissue is very important for human life. For this reason, the research of polymeric materials, which is the closest biomaterial to soft tissue and therefore phantom material, has increased recently. In this study, ionization to the polymeric biomaterials closest to the soft tissue in boron therapy application, and phonon release from all interactions were investigated and analyzed. This analysis was performed using MC-based TRIM simulation. In the analysis, the Bragg peak range closest to the soft tissue was 7.2% and PMMA was the phonon release from all interactions. It has been observed that the phonon production in phantoms results from ions on average 30% and recoils interactions 70%. The main novelty that this study will provide to the literature is to consider the phonon interactions as well as the ionization interactions. Thus, apart from proton and carbon, the most ideal polymeric biomaterial to be used instead of soft tissue was evaluated by calculating all interactions. Thus, it is aimed to determine the most ideal phantom material.