Assessment of the proton boron fusion reaction for practical radiation therapy applications using MCNP6

TL;DR

This study uses MCNP6 simulations to evaluate the proton boron fusion reaction's potential for targeted radiation therapy, finding current reaction rates too low for practical dose enhancement.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed MCNP6-based assessment of the proton boron fusion reaction's feasibility for clinical radiation therapy applications.

Findings

Reaction rates are too low for effective dose enhancement.

No measurable impact on energy deposition at clinically relevant boron levels.

Further cross section evaluations are needed for definitive conclusions.

Abstract

The proton boron fusion reaction, 11B(p, 3{\alpha}), is investigated using MCNP6 to assess the viability for potential use in radiation therapy. The 11B(p, 3{\alpha}) is theoretically desirable because it could combine the localized dose delivery protons exhibit (Bragg peak) with the creation of three high LET {\alpha} particles that locally deposit energy in tumor regions. Simple simulations of a proton pencil beam incident upon a water phantom and a water phantom with an axial region also containing boron were modeled using MCNP6 in order to determine the extent of the impact boron had upon the calculated energy deposition. The MCNP simulations performed demonstrated that the proton boron fusion reaction rate at clinically relevant boron concentrations was too small in order to have any measurable impact on the absorbed dose. It was determined that there are no good evaluations of the 11B(p, 3{\alpha}) reaction for use in MCNPX/6 and further work should be conducted in cross section evaluations in order to definitively evaluate the feasibility of the proton boron fusion reaction for use in radiation therapy applications.