Monte Carlo study on the secondary cancer risk estimations for patients undergoing prostate radiotherapy: A humanoid phantom study

Abstract

Aim

The aim of this study was to estimate the secondary malignancy risk from the radiation in FFB prostate linac-based radiotherapy for different organs of the patient.

Background

Radiation therapy is one of the main procedures of cancer treatment. However, the application the radiation may impose dose to organs of the patient which can be the cause of some malignancies.

Materials and methods

Monte Carlo (MC) simulation was used to calculate radiation doses to patient organs in 18MV linear accelerator (linac) based radiotherapy. A humanoid MC phantom was used to calculate the equivalent dose s for different organs and probability of secondary cancer, fatal and nonfatal risk, and other risks and parameters related to megavoltage radiation therapy. In out-of-field radiation calculation, it could be seen that neutrons imparted a higher dose to distant organs, and the dose to surrounding organs was mainly due to absorbed scattered photons and electron contamination.

Results

Our results showed that the bladder and skin with 54.89×10⁻³mSv/Gy and 46.09×10⁻³mSv/Gy, respectively, absorbed the highest equivalent dose s from photoneutrons, while a lower dose was absorbed by the lung at 3.42×10⁻³mSv/Gy. The large intestine and bladder absorbed 55.00×10⁻³mSv/Gy and 49.08×10⁻³, respectively, which were the highest equivalent dose s due to photons. The brain absorbed the lowest out-of-field dose, at 1.87×10⁻³mSv/Gy.

Conclusions

We concluded that secondary neutron portion was higher than other radiation. Then, we recommended more attention to neutrons in the radiation protection in linac based high energy radiotherapy.