Analysis of Relative Biological Effectiveness of Proton Beams and Iso-effective Dose Profiles Using Geant4

Abstract

Background:

The assessment of RBE quantity in the treatment of cancer tumors with proton beams in treatment planning systems (TPS) is of high significance. Given the significance of the issue and the studies conducted in the literature, this quantity is fixed and is taken as equal to 1.1.

Objective:

The main objective of this study was to assess RBE quantity of proton beams and their variations in different depths of the tumor. This dependency makes RBE values used in TPS no longer be fixed as they depend on the depth of the tumor and therefore this dependency causes some changes in the physical dose profile.

Materials and Methods:

The energy spectrum of protons was measured at various depths of the tumor using proton beam simulations and well as the complete simulation of a cell to a pair of DNA bases through Monte Carlo GEANT4. The resulting energy spectrum was used to estimate the number of double-strand breaks generated in cells. Finally, RBE values were calculated in terms of the penetration depth in the tumor.

Results and Conclusion:

The simulation results show that the RBE value not fixed terms of the depth of the tumor and it differs from the clinical value of 1.1 at the end of the dose profile and this will lead to a non-uniform absorbed dose profile. Therefore, to create a uniform impact dose area, deep-finishing systems need to be designed by taking into account deep RBE values.