Simulation study of dose enhancement in a cell due to nearby carbon and oxygen in particle radiotherapy

The aim of this study is to investigate the dose-deposition enhancement due to alpha-particle irradiation in a cellular model by using the carbon and the oxygen chemical compositions. A simulation study was performed to study dose enhancement due to carbon and oxygen for a human cell where the Geant4 code used for alpha-particle irradiation of a cellular phantom. The characteristics of the dose enhancements based on the concentrations of carbon and oxygen in the nucleus and cytoplasm by the alpha-particle radiation was investigated and was compared with those obtained by gold and gadolinium. The results showed that both the carbon- and the oxygen-induced dose enhancements were more effective than those of gold and gadolinium. We found that the dose enhancement effect was more dominant in the nucleus than in the cytoplasm if the carbon or the oxygen were uniformly distributed in the whole cell. For the condition that the added chemical composition was inserted only into the cytoplasm, the effect of the dose enhancement in the nucleus was weak. We showed that high-stopping-power materials offer a more effective dose enhancement efficacy and suggest that carbon nanotubes and oxygenation are promising candidates for dose enhancement tools in particle therapy.