Measurement of the fragmentation of Carbon nuclei used in hadron therapy

Beams of Carbon nuclei are used or planned to be used in various centers for cancer treatment around the world because of their therapeutic advantages over proton beams. The knowledge of the fragmentation of Carbon nuclei when they interact with the human body is important to evaluate the spatial profile of their energy deposition in the tissues, hence the damage to the tissues neighboring the tumor. In this respect, the identification of the fragmentation products is a key element. We present in this paper the measurement of about 2000 interactions of ¹²C nuclei with an energy of 400 MeV/nucleon in a detector simulating the density of the human body. The nuclear emulsion technique is used, by means of the so-called Emulsion Cloud Chamber (ECC). The nuclear emulsions are inspected using fast automated microscopes recently developed. With the data collected, an extensive study of the fragments produced in the interactions is carried out and the measurement of the charge-changing cross-section for the different channels of the final state is reported.