Practical biological spread-out Bragg peak design for a carbon beam

In radiation therapy, the carbon beams has more advantages with respect to biological properties then a proton beam. The carbon beam has a high linear energy transfer (LET) to the medium and a higher relative biological effectiveness (RBE). To design the spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) of biological dose for a carbon beam, we propose a practical method using the linear-quadratic (LQ) model and the Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation code. Various Bragg peak profiles and LETs were calculated for each slice in the target region. To generate an appropriate biological SOBP, we applied a set of weighting factors, which are power functions in terms of energy steps, to each obtained physical dose. The designed biological SOBP showed a uniformity of 1.34%.