Dose Analysis of Gadolinium Neutron Capture Therapy (GdNCT) on Cancer Using SHIELD-HIT12A

Abstract

This research aimed to determine the dose of radiation received in cancer therapy for each decay of Gadolinium atomic nuclei with isotope 157 (157Gd) in Gadolinium Neutron Capture Therapy using the SHIELD-HIT12A program. Knowing the amount of dose given to cancer tissue should aid in minimizing the damage that could occur in the healthy tissue around the cancer tissue, effectively killing only the cancer cells. The simulation employed in this research used the SHIELD-HIT12A program by providing input on beam.dat, mat.dat, detect.dat, and geo.dat files. The output data from the program comprised the value of recoil energy lost (energy absorbed into the target materials) for each of the 157Gd atomic nuclei, which was then processed by the dose determination equation to determine the dose given by the 157Gd nucleus to soft tissue. Based on the results, the amount of the dose given by each atomic nucleus 157Gd to soft tissue was 5.44 × 1011 Gy/decay.

Simulación de la reacción de captura neutrónica por gadolinio por medio de GEANT4

“…Debido a su transferencia lineal de energía (linear energy transfer, o LET, por sus siglas en inglés) de aproximadamente 300 keV/µm, los electrones Auger emitidos son altamente capaces de eliminar células tumorales. Esta es una de las razones por las cuales la terapia por captura neutrónica con 157 Gd permite lograr distribuciones de dosis y efectos biológicos comparables con aquellos obtenidos a partir de 10 B [7] [8] [9] [10].…”