Monte Carlo simulation of positron-emitting nuclei distributions in proton therapy

Proton therapy is mainly used to treat cancer where a conformal dose is essential. Methods for monitoring both the spatial distribution and the delivered dose have thus been proposed [1]. Proton irradiation on organic tissue produces positron emitters (mainly ¹¹C and ¹⁵O). Proton therapy monitoring may thus be performed using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) acquisition. The proposed methods most often consist in comparing a Monte Carlo simulation of the positron emitters produced during irradiation with PET measurements. The aim of this work is the modelling of the whole process from the irradiation to the PET image production using GATE toolkit.