Estimation of dose and light distributions in water during irradiation of muon beams

High-intensity muon beams are now available at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex and their use in radiotherapy may become possible in the future. Dose and range estimation are therefore important and optical imaging of the dose or range may be a promising method for that purpose. We calculated the dose and light distributions in water during irradiation of a positive muon beam using Monte Carlo simulation. First, we simulated the dose deposited in water for pencil beams with 30 and 50 MeV positive muons. We were able to clearly identify the Bragg peak in the depth dose profiles by muons and observed that the dose from positrons are added to the Bragg peak area with a ∼10% muon dose. We also found that the lateral dose widths increased as the depth increased and that it was ∼3-5 times wider at the Bragg peak position. With the light distribution of the muon in water, light produced by the positrons was dominant and distributed around the Bragg peak, and the peak positions were estimated within 2 mm differences of the peak position of the dose distributions. It is therefore possible to monitor the Bragg peak position of muons using an optical method.