Comparisons of hadrontherapy-relevant data to nuclear interaction codes in the Geant4 toolkit

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 420; no. 1; pp. 12163 - 9
• Main Authors: Braunn, B, Boudard, A, Colin, J, Cugnon, J, Cussol, D, David, J C, Kaitaniemi, P, Labalme, M, Leray, S, Mancusi, D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.01.2013
• Subjects: Angular distribution; Atomic collisions; Beams (radiation); Cascades; Ion beams; Mathematical models; Nuclear interactions; Nuclear models; Physics; Polymethyl methacrylates; Qualitative analysis; Therapy; Toolkits
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/420/1/012163

Comparisons between experimental data, INCL and other nuclear models available in the Geant4 toolkit are presented. The data used for the comparisons come from a fragmentation experiment realised at GANIL facility. The main purpose of this experiment was to measure production rates and angular distributions of emitted particles from the collision of a 95.A MeV 12C beam and thick PMMA (plastic) targets. The latest version of the Intra Nuclear Cascade of Liege code extended to nucleus-nucleus collisions for ion beam therapy application will be described. This code as well as JQMD and the Geant4 binary cascade has been compared with these hadrontherapy-oriented experimental data. The results from the comparisons exhibit an overall qualitative agreement between the models and the experimental data. However, at a quantitative level, it has been shown that none of this three models manage to reproduce precisely all the data. The nucleus-nucleus extension of INCL, which is not predictive enough for ion beam therapy application yet, has nevertheless proven to be competitive with other nuclear collisions codes.