Carbon ion fragmentation effects on the nanometric level behind the Bragg peak depth

In this study, fragmentation yields of carbon therapy beams are estimated using the Geant4 simulation toolkit version 9.5. Simulations are carried out in a step-by-step mode using the Geant4-DNA processes for each of the major contributing fragments. The energy of the initial beam is taken 400 MeV amu⁻¹ as this is the highest energy, which is used for medical accelerators and this would show the integral role of secondary contributions in radiotherapy irradiations. The obtained results showed that 64% of the global dose deposition is initiated by carbon ions, while up to 36% is initiated by the produced fragments including all their isotopes. The energy deposition clustering yields of each of the simulated fragments are then estimated using the DBSCAN clustering algorithm and they are compared to the yields of the incident primary beam. (paper)