Comparison of two analysis methods for nuclear reaction measurements of 12C +12C interactions at 95 MeV/u for hadrontherapy

TL;DR

This paper compares two analysis methods for measuring nuclear reaction cross sections in 12C +12C interactions at 95 MeV/u, crucial for accurate dose estimation in hadrontherapy treatments.

Contribution

It introduces and compares a graphical cut method and the KaliVeda functional method for particle identification in nuclear reaction data analysis.

Findings

Both methods successfully identify emitted particles.

The comparison highlights differences in accuracy and efficiency.

Results support improved dose calculation precision in hadrontherapy.

Abstract

During therapeutic treatment with heavier ions like carbon, the beam undergoes nuclear fragmentation and secondary light charged particles, in particular protons and alpha particles, are produced. To estimate the dose deposited into the tumors and the surrounding healthy tissues, the accuracy must be higher than ($\pm$3% and$\pm$1 mm). Therefore, measurements are performed to determine the double differential cross section for different reactions. In this paper, the analysis of data from 12C +12C reactions at 95 MeV/u are presented. The emitted particles are detected with \DeltaEthin-\DeltaEthick-E telescopes made of a stack of two silicon detectors and a CsI crystal. Two different methods are used to identify the particles. One is based on graphical cuts onto the \DeltaE-E maps, the second is based on the so-called KaliVeda method using a functional description of \DeltaE versus E. The results of the two methods will be presented in this paper as well as the comparison between both.