Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Sydney, Australia.
Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Sydney, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2018 Nov 2;8(1):16257. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-34643-w.
This paper presents Neutron Capture Enhanced Particle Therapy (NCEPT), a method for enhancing the radiation dose delivered to a tumour relative to surrounding healthy tissues during proton and carbon ion therapy by capturing thermal neutrons produced inside the treatment volume during irradiation. NCEPT utilises extant and in-development boron-10 and gadolinium-157-based drugs from the related field of neutron capture therapy. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that a typical proton or carbon ion therapy treatment plan generates an approximately uniform thermal neutron field within the target volume, centred around the beam path. The tissue concentrations of neutron capture agents required to obtain an arbitrary 10% increase in biological effective dose are estimated for realistic treatment plans, and compared to concentrations previously reported in the literature. We conclude that the proposed method is theoretically feasible, and can provide a worthwhile improvement in the dose delivered to the tumour relative to healthy tissue with readily achievable concentrations of neutron capture enhancement drugs.
本文提出了中子俘获增强粒子治疗（NCEPT），这是一种在质子和碳离子治疗过程中增强肿瘤辐射剂量的方法，相对于周围健康组织，通过在辐照过程中捕获治疗体积内产生的热中子。NCEPT 利用来自中子俘获治疗相关领域的现有和正在开发的硼-10 和镝-157 基药物。使用蒙特卡罗模拟，我们证明了典型的质子或碳离子治疗计划在靶体积内产生一个大约均匀的热中子场，围绕着射束路径。为了获得任意 10%的生物有效剂量增加，估计了在现实治疗计划中获得所需的中子俘获剂的组织浓度，并与文献中以前报道的浓度进行了比较。我们的结论是，所提出的方法在理论上是可行的，并且可以提供与健康组织相比肿瘤辐射剂量的有价值的提高，而使用易于实现的中子俘获增强药物浓度。
