Significance of the proton energy loss mechanism to gold nanoparticles in proton therapy: a Geant4 simulation

The biological effectiveness in proton therapy is only slightly greater than of the treatment by X-ray and hence, many researches have suggested the use of gold nanoparticles for increasing the ionization interactions to produce more secondary electrons and elevate the yield of DNA damage. But the ionization interactions also lead to protons energy loss inside the nanoparticles. The present study shows that, the protons slowed-down by High-Z nanoparticles are responsible for dose enhancement rather than the produced secondary electrons. To this purpose, using Geant4 Monte Carlo tool, one million nanoparticles distributed in a proton irradiated volume and variation of the proton's spectra and the dose related to this variation has been demonstrated. It was found that, the elevation in proton's LET values when passing through the gold nanoparticles will lead to a more significant dose enhancement than the increased dose due to the extra secondary electrons. Also, it was found that, the mechanism of protons slowing-down by gold nanoparticles has another useful aspect in proton therapy in which, the dose leakage to surrounding healthy tissues will be reduced which must be considered in future investigations more precisely.