Gate/Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation for calculation of dose distribution of 400 MeV/u carbon ion beam and fragments in water

The applications of carbon ion beam in tumor therapy have attracted more attention in recent years. Monte Carlo simulation is an important approach to obtain accurate radiotherapy parameters. In this work, a 400 MeV/u carbon ion beam incident on water phantom was simulated with Gate/Geant4 tools. In methods, the authors set up a carbon ion beam source according to the experiment parameters of Haettner, defined the geometries and materials, set up the physics processes, and designed the means of information collection. In results, the authors obtained the longitudinal dose distribution, the lateral dose distribution, and the relative uncertainty of dose. The dose contributions of all kinds of fragments were calculated detailedly and compared with the Francis results. This work is helpful for people’s understanding of the dose distributions produced by carbon ion beam and fragments in water. The simulation method is also significative for radiotherapy treatment planning of carbon ion beam, and it is easy to extend. For obtaining a special result, we may change the particle energy, particle type, target material, target geometry, physics process, detector, etc.