Radiation Measurements 45 (2010) 1330e1333

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Radiation Measurements
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/radmeas

Monte Carlo simulation of mini TEPC microdosimetric spectra: Inuence of low energy electrons
S. Rollet a, *, P. Colautti b, B. Grosswendt c, D. Moro b, E. Gargioni d, V. Conte b, L. DeNardo e
a

AIT-Austrian Institute of Technology, Donau-City-Strae 1, A-1220 Vienna, Austria INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, I-35020 Legnaro, Padova, Italy c Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Bundesallee 100, D-38116 Braunschweig, Germany d University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany e Physics Department of Padova University, Padova, Italy
b

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 14 November 2009 Received in revised form 4 June 2010 Accepted 22 June 2010 Keywords: TEPC Tissue equivalent proportional counter FLUKA

a b s t r a c t
In the past few years, miniaturized tissue-equivalent gas detectors (mini TEPCs) have been developed for application of microdosimetry in radiotherapy. These mini-TEPCs are characterised by millimetric dimensions. They are equipped neither with an internal calibration source nor with electric eld tubes, which would properly dene the sensitive volume hence the simulated site size. In spite of these lacks, mini TEPCs working in gas ow conditions have proven to be precise and reliable detectors. However, for future therapeutic plans including microdosimetric data, consistency between experimental and calculated data is important. Existing general-purpose Monte Carlo codes have proven to be very useful to calculate the energy deposition due to ionization in macroscopic targets, even in various complex radiation elds. However, theoretical models implemented in these codes for simulating electron transport and straggling are valid only for energies above a few keV. This restricts their applicability for simulating radiation transport at a micrometric level, where low-energy electrons play a dominant role. In this work, we calculate frequency distributions of deposited energy in a mini TEPC (with sizes equivalent to 1 and 2 mm) due to photons using the Monte Carlo code FLUKA. Comparisons between simulated and experimental data show a rather good agreement. Differences due to different FLUKA settings are discussed. 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction One of the great challenges of current applied radiation physics is the dosimetry of ionizing radiation in cases where the pattern of ionization in tissue may be extremely inhomogeneous (for example in radionuclide therapy or hadrontherapy). In such cases, macroscopic quantities, like absorbed dose, are not sufciently accurate to determine the radiation quality of the eld (ICRU, 1983; Grosswendt, 2007). Therefore, microdosimetric quantities have to be introduced, to properly assess radiation quality in radiation therapy (Wambersie et al., 2007). The major requirements for developing microdosimetric detectors are that they i) have to be used in unknown and highly intense elds, ii) have to be calibrated to generally accepted radiation quantities, iii) have to be safe for use in clinical applications. The miniaturized tissueequivalent proportional counter (mini TEPC), developed at

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: colautti@lnl.infn.it (P. Colautti). 1350-4487/$ e see front matter 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2010.06.055

LNLeINFN (Legnaro, Italy) in the last few years (DeNardo et al., 2004; Moro et al., 2006), satises these requirements. Therefore, the study of its radiation detection efciency by means of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations plays an important role. General-purpose MC codes have proved to be very useful to calculate the energy deposition due to ionization in macroscopic targets, even in various complex radiation elds. However, the theoretical models implemented in these codes for simulating particle transport, based on multiple-scattering theory, are valid only for electron energies above a few keV. This restricts their applicability for simulating radiation transport at a nanometric level. On the other hand, the development of a particle-track simulation code requires the knowledge of low-energy electronscattering cross sections (down to a few electron volts), which is available only for a limited number of materials. Moreover, an adhoc particle-track simulation code can hardly be used in very complex geometries, due to the huge amount of collisions which highly increase computing time. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the applicability of multi-purpose MC-codes for simulating radiation transport at intermediate distances, namely at micrometer

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level. In this work, we compare the microdosimetric spectra obtained with numerical simulations using the Monte Carlo code FLUKA, with those measured with a mini TEPC in two different photon elds. Different types of particle-transport algorithms and energy thresholds have been adopted in the code in order to study in detail how these can affect the results. 2. Materials and methods A TEPC is a specialized proportional counter used to determine the radiation quality of unknown radiation elds and basically consists of a spherical or cylindrical chamber, with wall materials and lling gas composition matching the elemental composition of biological tissue. The use of a TEPC in microdosimetry is based on the assumption that the spatial distribution of ionization events in the gas-lled cavity is the same as in geometrically similar regions (or sites) of equivalent effective dimensions, i.e. equal product of diameter and density (Rossi and Zaider, 1996; Dietze and Pihet, 1995). The mini-TEPC designed at LNLeINFN (DeNardo et al., 2004; Moro et al., 2006) has been characterized by means of MC simulations using a simplied detector geometry, consisting of a cylindrical cavity, 0.9 mm in diameter, lled with a low-pressure propane-based tissue equivalent (TE) gas, as schematically shown in Fig. 1. The 0.7 mm thick cavity walls are made of A-150 plastic and Rexolite (both tissue-equivalent materials), and are surrounded by a 0.2 mm titanium layer. The gas density is varied in order to simulate sites that, at a density of 1 g/cm3, would have a diameter varying from 1 mm to 2 mm. The parallel-plane photon beam considered in the simulation to calculate the detector response, has the same area as the detector side and is directed as shown in Fig. 1. Due to the small dimensions of the detector and to the very low gas density (ranging approximately from 1 103 g/cm3 to 2 103 g/cm3), the number of photon-interaction events taking place in the gas cavity is negligible. Therefore, the energy deposited inside the gas cavity is mainly due to electrons created in the detector wall. When the gas density rgas corresponds to a site diameter D 2 mm at requiv 1 g/cm3 (i.e. D rgas 2 104 g/cm2) only electrons having an energy less than about 8 keV are, on average, fully absorbed. For D 1 mm and D 0.5 mm, that happens to electrons having an energy of less than 5 keV and 3 keV respectively (Iskev et al., 1983). Therefore, the transport of lowenergy (less than 10 keV) electrons inside the gas cavity cannot be neglected in the MC simulation. 3. Experimental measurements The mini TEPC used for the measurements has a sensitive volume of 0.9 mm of diameter and height in order to stand high

intensity radiation elds without pile-up spectral distortions. The counter is encapsulated in a 2.7 mm of external diameter 0.2 mm thick titanium shield. This size was designed for inserting the counter in 2.7 mm inner diameter (the so called 8 French) catheters, which are used in interstitial surgery for introducing tools inside the patient. The counter sensitive volume is dened by the cylindrical A-150 wall and by insulator disks which have a cavity in the center (200 mm deep and 150 mm in diameter cavity). The anode is a 10 mm gold-plated tungsten wire. More details about the mini TEPC are given in reference (DeNardo et al., 2004). The experiments have been carried out at the secondary standard Centre of ENEA-Montecuccolino (Italy) in 60Co and 137Cs photons elds. Because of different source intensities, measurements were performed at 25 and 1 mGy/min respectively. Therefore, mini TEPC counting rate was of about 4000 and 300 counts per second. Measurements have been performed with the propanebased tissue-equivalent gas mixture owing in the counter at 1 cc/min (@ STP conditions). The gas pressure was 617 mbar and 1234 mbar for 1 mm and 2 mm site sizes respectively. Spectra have been collected and processed in the usual way, shaping the electronic signal at 250 ns and using a CAMAC acquisition system. The lineal energy calibration has been performed by using the second derivative maxima, which appears in yd(y) spectra near the electron edge (Moro et al., 2003) and by assigning them the values of 12.2 keV/mm and 9.1 keV/mm for 1 mm and 2 mm sites respectively. The lower detection threshold of these detectors was about 0.15 keV/mm. To take into account the contribution under the threshold, a linear extrapolation was performed in the frequency f(y) spectra down to the 0.01 keV/mm value. The frequency-averaged yf and dose-averaged yd values have been calculated from spectral distributions. Their overall uncertainties have been assessed by using the error-propagation theory (Moro et al., 2003). 4. Numerical simulations The simulation of the response of the mini TEPC is done with the FLUKA Monte Carlo code. FLUKA is a general-purpose code capable of transporting several types of particles in a wide energy range. An exhaustive description of the transport capabilities of these codes is beyond the purpose of this work and can be found in Fass et al. (2003) and Fass et al. (2005). Detailed descriptions of the numerical set up with the FLUKA code to simulate the response of a TEPC and the evaluation the relation between different quantities used in radiation protection in photon, neutron and also complex radiation elds are given in previous papers (Rollet et al., 2004, 2006; Latocha, 2007; Rollet et al., 2007). In this paper, the FLUKA code version 2008 is used for all the presented simulated results. The inner dimensions and the relevant thicknesses of the mini TEPC are described in details by means of the FLUKA combinatorial geometry, using various combinations of planes, cylinders and rectangular parallelepipeds. Simulation settings have been chosen to ensure the most detailed treatment of electron and photon transport (DEFAULTs card: PRECISION). The energy cut-off for electrons and photons is set at the lowest transport threshold allowed in FLUKA, i.e. 1 keV. The scoring region is the gas chamber but the particles are also tracked in the surrounding materials to check the scatterings and the energy spectra therein. Beside average quantities, FLUKA has the capability to score energy deposition on an event by event basis between given energy limits distributed over 1024 linear channels (with the DETECT card) or to score each of them (with EVENTBIN card) used also for logarithmic binning. Both these cards are used to score the energy deposited inside the mini-TEPC gas chamber as a function of lineal energy. In FLUKA a single scattering option is available when the Molire multiple scattering algorithm becomes unreliable (at low energies

Fig. 1. Schematic view of the mini TEPC geometry and materials implemented in the Monte Carlo simulation.

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in high Z materials, when the number of scatterings is too low in thin layers or on boundaries between different materials in presence of a magnetic eld). This is usually done automatically but it is also possible to completely switch off the multiple scattering in selected materials with the option MULSOPT. In the present simulation, the inuence on the results of the single scattering algorithm and of the electron and photon transport thresholds has been investigated thoroughly. The low pressure of the gas requires large numbers of MC calculations to achieve a reasonably statistical accuracy for the simulation results. The analysis of at least 10 different runs with 1e5 107 source particles is used to estimate the different moments in order to assess the statistical convergence and to achieve an uncertainty on the total absorbed dose in the gas of 0.2e0.3%. The simulations are done using a Linux cluster, which consists of four nodes, each containing four Intel Core2-Quad 2.4 GHz processors. The CPU time for each calculation varies depending on the particles transport threshold and the amount of the single scattering performed. Using the multiple scattering everywhere except on the boundary between gas and A150 it varies from a minimum CPU time of 2 h (for 10 keV threshold), 3 h (5 keV), 4 h (3 keV), 7 h (2 keV) up to 16 h (for the lowest threshold at 1 keV). The microdosimetric spectra to be compared with the measurements are elaborated as described in (ICRU,1983). The lineal energy y is given by dividing the average deposited energy in each channel by the mean chord length of the microdosimetric volume. 5. Results and discussion The variation of the microdosimetric spectrum with the transport threshold can be seen in Fig. 2. The contribution to the main peak around 0.3 keV/mm due to the particles crossing the gas (crossers) doesnt change but the lower energy threshold changes signicantly the spectrum in the 1e10 keV range. This is the region mainly inuenced by the secondary particles produced in the materials surrounding the gas and than stopped inside the gas (stoppers). The peak in the region 5e10 keV/mm is due to energy released in the gas by electrons having a range comparable with the TEPC mean chord length (exact stoppers). As the transport threshold is lowered, more electrons are properly transported from the counter sensitive volume to the counter walls. Therefore, they are no more exact stoppers, hence the 5-10 keV/mm event yield decreases. This peak is further reduced when the single scattering option is applied everywhere (and not only at the boundary).

The absorbed dose distributions yd(y), as a function of lineal energy measured with the mini TEPC and simulated with the FLUKA code, are compared in Figs. 3 and 4 for 60Co and 137Cs sources respectively. Fig. 3 shows the simulated absorbed dose distribution for 60Co photon source for 1 mm (a) and 2 mm (b) site diameter. The analogous spectra for a 137Cs source are presented in Fig. 4 for site diameter of 1 mm (a) and 2 mm (b). In general, comparison points out a satisfactory agreement between simulations and measurements. The simulated upper limit of y, called electron edge, which is determined by the maximum energy loss by secondary electrons, agrees very well with measured data. The best agreement is achieved when the single scattering option is switched on everywhere. That increases the CPU time (by a factor of about three), but it makes calculated and measured curves to almost coincide at lower energy (137Cs) as shown in Fig. 4. Some signicant differences are instead visible with the higher photon energy (60C). In this case, the electron energy is higher and they have fewer collisions inside the gas (a cavity of 1 mm for Co is roughly equivalent to a 0.5 mm for Cs), hence the ionization uctuations around the average value can be signicant. The importance of the simulations treatment of these uctuations and of the electrons below 1 keV must be investigated with analogue Monte Carlo codes like that one used, for instance, by Cesari et al. (2002). Table 1 shows the frequency-averaged yf and the dose-averaged yd values. The spectral differences between calculated and

Fig. 2. Inuence of electron transport simulation threshold on the microdosimetric spectra (Co 2 mm).

Fig. 3. Absorbed dose distribution as a function of lineal energy as measured by a mini-TECP in a 60Co eld. The simulated curves with multiple scattering (grey) and with Single Scattering (black, SS) are also shown (see text). The simulated site size diameters are 1 mm in (a) and 2 mm in (b).

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data for 1e2 mm sites. Signicant differences for events sizes of 1e10 keV/mm are observed using a multiple scattering algorithm and higher transport thresholds for photons and electrons. These differences are greatly reduced when the lowest threshold is used and the capability of FLUKA to switch-on the single scattering everywhere is fully implemented. In order to investigate the reasons of residual spectral differences, the treatment of electrons with energies smaller than 1 keV must be investigated with analogue Monte Carlo codes.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank Gianfranco Gualdrini, chairperson of the EURADOS Working Group 6 Computational Dosimetry and Alberto Fass for their precious suggestions. We thank as well the 5th Scientic Commission of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics, which has supported the experimental measurements.

References
Cesari, V., Colautti, P., Magrin, G., DeNardo, L., Baek, W.Y., Grosswendt, B., Alkaa, A., Khamphan, C., Sgur, P., Tornielli, G., 2002. Nanodosimetric measurements with an avalanche connement TEPC. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 99, 337e342. DeNardo, L., Cesari, V., Don, G., Magrin, G., Colautti, P., Conte, V., Tornielli, G., 2004. Mini-TEPCs for radiation therapy. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 108, 345e352. Dietze, G., Pihet, P., 1995. Design, construction and use of tissue-equivalent proportional counters. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 61, 297e381. Fass, A., Ferrari, A., Roesler, S., Sala, P.R., Battistoni, G., Cerutti, F., Gadioli, E., Garzelli, M.V., Ballarini, F., Ottolenghi, A., Empl, A., Ranft, J., 2003. The physics models of FLUKA: status and recent developments. In: Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics 2003 Conference (CHEP2003), La Jolla, CA, USA, March 24e28, (paper MOMT005) eConf C0303241 (2003), arXiv:hep-ph/ 0306267. Fass, A., Ferrari, A., Ranft, J., Sala, P.R., 2005. FLUKA: a multi-particle transport code. Yellow Report CERN-2005-010 and INFN/TC_05/11, SLAC-R-773. Grosswendt, B., 2007. From macro to nanodosimetry: limits of the absorbed-dose concept and denition of new quantities, in: G. Gualdrini and P. Ferrari (eds) "Proceedings of the International Workshop on Uncertainty Assessment in Computational Dosimetry", 8th to 10th October 2007, Bologna, ISBN: 978-39805741-9-8. ICRU, 1983. Microdosimetry, ICRU Report 36. Iskev, H., Cunningham, J.W., Watt, D.E., 1983. Projected ranges and effective stopping powers of electrons with energy between 20 eV and 10 keV. Phys. Med. Biol. 28, 535e545. Latocha, M., 2007. The results of cosmic radiation in-ight TEPC measurements during the CAATER ight campaign and comparison with simulation. Radiat. Prot. Dosim 125, 412e415. Moro, D., Seravalli, E., Colautti, P., 2003. Statistical and overall uncertainties in BNCT microdosimetric measurements, LNL-INFN Report-199. Moro, D., Colautti, P., Gualdrini, G., Masi, M., Conte, V., De Nardo, L., Tornielli, G., 2006. Two miniaturised TEPCs in a single detector for BNCT microdosimetry. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 122, 396e400. Rollet, S., Beck, P., Ferrari, A., Pelliccioni, M., Autischer, M., 2004. Dosimetric considerations on TEPC FLUKA-simulation and measurements. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 110, 833e838. Rollet, S., Autischer, M., Beck, P., Latocha, M., 2007. Measurements and simulation of lineal energy distribution at the CERN high energy facility with a tissueequivalent proportional counter. Radiat. Prot. Dosim. 125, 425e428. Rossi, H.H., Zaider, M., 1996. Microdosimetry and Its Applications. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Wambersie, A., Hendry, J.H., Andreo, P., De Luca, P.M., Gahbauer, R., Menzel, H., Whitmore, G., 2007. The RBE issues in ion-beam therapy: conclusions of a joint IAEA/ICRU working group regarding quantities and units. Rad. Prot. Dosim. 122, 463e470.

Fig. 4. Absorbed dose distribution as a function of lineal energy as measured by a mini-TECP in a 137Cs eld. The simulated curves with multiple scattering (grey) and with Single Scattering (black, SS) are also shown (see text). The simulated site size diameters are 1 mm in (a) and 2 mm in (b). Table 1 137 Cs and 60Co frequency-averaged and dose-averaged mean lineal energies, measured with the mini TEPC and calculated with FLUKA code. FLUKA-calculated values have been obtained with the single scattering option everywhere. Source type
137 137 60

Simulated site size [mm] 1 2 1 2

Experimental yf [keV/mm] 0.37 0.35 0.30 0.28 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02

Calculated yf [keV/mm] 0.43 0.40 0.30 0.27 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02

Experimental yd [keV/mm] 2.1 1.6 1.8 1.4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1

Calculated yd [keV/mm] 2.1 1.7 1.8 1.4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1

Cs Cs Co 60 Co

measured data are smoothed in the mean values, which do not show any signicant difference. 6. Conclusions Microdosimetric photon spectra calculated by a generalpurpose Monte Carlo code like FLUKA t rather well experimental