The Characteristics of Carbon-Ion Radiotherapy

Abstract

The fundamental principle of radiotherapy lies in precise dose delivery to the target, while minimizing damage to the surrounding normal organs. Carbon ion beams have a definite range and sharp high-dose Bragg peak. At the carbon ion Bragg peak, the ionization is enormous and shows high biological effects. Hence, among the various ion species, carbon ions were selected for cancer therapy because they were thought to have the optimal properties in terms of biologically effective dose-localization to realize this principle of radiotherapy.

The Bragg peak of the carbon ion beam is sharp and narrow. To cover various sizes of tumors with carbon ion beams, two different beam delivery techniques, a passive beam delivery using a fixed spread out of the Bragg peak (SOBP) and active beam scanning, were developed.