Physics and small-scale dosimetry of α-emitters for targeted radionuclide therapy: The case of 211At

Background: Monte Carlo simulations have been considered for a long time the gold standard for dose calculations in conventional radiotherapy and are currently being applied for the same purpose in innovative radiotherapy techniques such as targeted radionuclide therapy (TRT). Purpose: We present in this work a benchmarking study of the latest version of the Transport d'Ions Lourds Dans l'Aqua & Vivo (TILDA-V) Monte Carlo track structure code, highlighting its capabilities for describing the full slowing down of alpha-particles in water and the energy deposited in cells by alpha-emitters in the context of TRT. Methods: We performed radiation transport simulations of alpha-particles (10 keV u(-1)-100 MeV u(-1)) in water with TILDA-V and the Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System (PHITS) version 3.33. We compared the predictions of each code in terms of track parameters (stopping power, range and radial dose profiles) and cellular S-values of the promising radionuclide astatine-211 (At-211). Additional comparisons were made with available data in the literature. Results: The stopping power, range and radial dose profiles of alpha-particles computed with TILDA-V were in excellent agreement with other calculations and available data. Overall, minor differences with PHITS were ascribed to phase effects, that is, related to the use of interaction cross sections computed for water vapor or liquid water. However, important discrepancies were observed in the radial dose profiles of monoenergetic alpha-particles, for which PHITS results showed a large underestimation of the absorbed dose compared to other codes and experimental data. The cellular S-values of At-211 computed with TILDA-V agreed within 4% with the values predicted by PHITS and MIRDcell. Conclusions: The validation of the TILDA-V code presented in this work opens the possibility to use it as an accurate simulation tool for investigating the interaction of alpha-particles in biological media down to the nanometer scale in the context of medical research. The code may help nuclear medicine physicians in their choice of alpha-emitters for TRT. Further research will focus on the application of TILDA-V for quantifying radioinduced damage on the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule.