Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Magnetic field effects on particle beams and their implications for dose calculation
in MR guided particle therapy

Hermann Fuchs,1, 2 Philipp Moser,1, 2, 3 Martin Gröschl,3 and Dietmar Georg1, 2, 4

Accepted Article
1)
Department of Radiation Oncology, Medical University of Vienna / AKH Vienna,
Austriaa)
2)
Christian Doppler Laboratory for Medical Radiation Research
for Radiation Oncology, Medical University of Vienna,
Austria
3)
Institute of Applied Physics, Vienna University of Technology,
Austria
4)
Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical University of Vienna / AKH Vienna,
Austria

(Dated: January 5, 2017)

 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Purpose: To investigate and model effects of magnetic fields on proton and carbon
ion beams for dose calculation.
Methods: In a first step Monte Carlo simulations using Gate 7.1/Geant4.10.0.p03
Accepted Article
were performed for proton and carbon ion beams in magnetic fields ranging from
0 to 3 T. Initial particle energies ranged from 60-250 MeV (protons) and 120-400
MeV/u (carbon ions), respectively. The resulting dose distributions were analyzed
focusing on beam deflection, dose deformation as well as the impact of material het-
erogeneities. In a second step, a numerical algorithm was developed to calculate
the lateral beam position. Using the Runge-Kutta method an iterative solution of
the relativistic Lorentz equation, corrected for the changing particle energy during
penetration, was performed. For comparison a γ-index analysis was utilized, using a
criteria of 2%/2 mm of the local maximum.
Results: A tilt in the dose distribution within the Bragg peak area was observed,
leading to non-negligible dose distribution changes. The magnitude was found to de-
pend on the magnetic field strength as well as on the initial beam energy. Comparison
of the 3 T dose distribution with non B field (nominal) dose distributions, resulted
in a γmean (mean value of the γ distribution) of 0.6, with 14.4% of the values above
1 and γ1% (1% of all points have an equal or higher γ value) of 1.8. The presented
numerical algorithm calculated the lateral beam offset with maximum errors of less
than 2% with calculation times of less than five microseconds. The impact of tissue
interfaces on the proton dose distributions was found to be less than 2% for a dose
voxel size of 1 × 1 × 1 mm3 .
Conclusion: Non-negligible dose deformations at the Bragg peak area were identi-
fied for high initial energies and strong magnetic fields. A fast numerical algorithm
based on the solution of the energy corrected relativistic Lorentz equation was able
to describe the beam path, taking into account the particle energy, magnetic field
and material.

PACS numbers: 87.55.de,87.55.kh,87.55.kd,87.55.D-,87.55.-x,87.10.Vg

Keywords: carbon ion, proton, magnetic field, MR, ion beam therapy, characteriza-
tion
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

LIST OF FIGURES

1 Schematic illustration of the employed geometrical set-up. The continuous

Accepted Article
arrow marks the initial beam direction, while the dashed arrows indicate the
magnetic field orientation. For reference the direction of beam deflection is
indicated by a dotted line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 (a) Dose deposition for a 250 MeV proton beam in water encountering a 3 T
magnetic field. The smaller picture displays the zoomed Bragg peak region.
(b) γ-index distribution using a criteria of 2%/2mm compared to a Bragg
peak region without magnetic field which was rotated and offset to match the
beam angle and position at the Bragg peak area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Energy spectrum of a 250 MeV proton beam traversing a water phantom in a
3 T magnetic field, (a) after the water entrance at 10 mm depth and (b) before
the Bragg peak at 350 mm depth recorded perpendicular to the incident beam
direction. Each graph depicting from top to bottom the energy per proton
distribution, phase space and particle count distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4 Comparison of the Runge-Kutta calculation of the beam deflection for a (a)
60, 150 and 250 MeV proton beam and a (b) 120, 250 and 400 MeV/u carbon
ion beam in water experiencing a magnetic field of 3 T. The solid lines rep-
resent the dose maximum at the given penetration depths, while the dashed
curve depicts the numerical calculated values. The rise at the end of the pro-
ton reference data is due to a deformation of the Bragg peak area described
above which was not modeled in the numerical approach. In (b) the Bragg
peak depth is indicated by a small bar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5 Residual range distribution of (a) secondary electrons measured in the beam
entrance, plateau and Bragg peak region and (b) helium and oxygen ions of
a 250 MeV proton beam in water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6 Laterally integrated dose distribution for a 250 MeV proton beam in a water
phantom with 30 mm air cavity, with and without a magnetic field. The blue
line corresponds to an applied magnetic field of 3 T, the red dashed continuous
line corresponds to no applied magnetic field. Due to magnetic bending, the
range of the particle beams does not coincide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

I. INTRODUCTION

The role and importance of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in radiation oncology is
Accepted Article
rapidly increasing. Compared to existing and widespread X-ray based solutions for image-
guided radiotherapy, it offers superior soft tissue contrast without additional dose to the
patient. Repeated imaging using MR allows high precision treatments and facilitates adap-
tive radiotherapy approaches and tumor motion tracking16,29 . For precision photon beam
therapy the combination of an MR and treatment delivery system is already ongoing. For
example, a commercial system combining a 0.35 T MR and three cobalt sources is already
in clinical operation18,28 and clinical prototypes of an integrated hybrid MR-linac system are
close to commercialization14,22,23 . The combination of magnetic fields with radiation therapy
poses several challenges in patient positioning, treatment work-flow, treatment planning and
dose delivery. Consequently, MR guided radiotherapy has become a key research topic that
also stimulates particle beam therapy15,25 .

It has already been shown that proton beam deflections due to magnetic fields cannot be
neglected in dose calculation23 . A first approach to account for magnetic field deflections in
treatment planning was published recently12,17 . However, these attempts were based on field
free plan optimization and magnetic field corrections were applied only in a separate post-
optimization step17 or by using a multi-step full MC approach for identifying beam entrance
angles and dose optimization, respectively12 . In order to increase dose calculation preci-
sion and to avoid lengthy manual plan tuning, magnetic field effects need to be integrated
directly into the dose calculation and optimization. Wolf et al.27 showed that an analyti-
cal approach is able to describe the proton beam trajectory in a homogeneous magnetic field.

The use of analytical models has become standard in modern treatment planning system
for dose calculation in particle therapy, some are also being developed to investigate novel
treatment options10,11 . In this manuscript we present a generic numerical algorithm that
accurately models the behavior of a particle beam in an arbitrary magnetic field, which was
subsequently applied to proton and carbon ion beams. Furthermore, extensive parametriza-
tion of additional beam effects in the presence of a magnetic field was performed, such as the
influence on secondary fragments. The analytic algorithm can be directly used in a treat-
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

ment planning system for dose calculation during optimization of scanned particle beam
therapy, i.e. inverse treatment planning.
Accepted Article
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS

A. Monte Carlo

Reference as well as benchmarking data for the subsequent numerical algorithm develop-
ment was generated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. A custom modified development ver-
sion of GATE 7.1 alongside Geant4 10.0 patch 03 was used for all simulations. GATE is a MC
platform based on the Geant4 framework2 , developed by the OpenGATE collaboration13 .
Data analysis was performed using the ROOT framework in version 5.34/244 . All sim-
ulations were performed utilizing the QGSP_BERT_EMV physics list with 107 primary
particles and a voxel size of 0.5 mm in lateral and longitudinal direction, respectively. Sim-
ulations investigating material interfaces were performed with a resolution of 0.5 mm in the
area of interest, allowing to investigate also small effects by low energetic particles such as
electrons. The statistical uncertainty was below 3% for areas receiving more than 10% of
the total dose.
The simulations were performed on an in-house computer grid as well as on the Vienna
Scientific Cluster 2, a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster designed to cover the
computing demands of scientific projects.

B. Irradiation geometries

A particle beam with an initially Gaussian shape of σ = 3mm was assumed, with beam
diversion set to zero, which impinged on a rectangular water phantom of 350×350×420 mm3
alongside the z-axis. The phantom was placed in a homogeneous magnetic field along the
y-axis, perpendicular to the initial beam direction. A sketch of the used set-up is depicted
in Fig. 1. Simulations were performed with mono-energetic proton and carbon ion beams.
Initial energies of 60, 150, and 250 MeV for protons and 120, 250, and 400 MeV/u for carbon
ions were chosen with respect to the energy ranges available at the Austrian particle therapy
center, MedAustron6,24,26 .
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Magnetic fields of 0, 0.35, 1 and 3 T were investigated, covering the range of clinical usage
from low field open MR systems up to high field diagnostic devices.
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x

z
incident particles

y de
ected beam

magnetic field

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the employed geometrical set-up. The continuous arrow marks
the initial beam direction, while the dashed arrows indicate the magnetic field orientation. For
reference the direction of beam deflection is indicated by a dotted line.

Particle beams experience repeated scattering events during penetration of matter. The
resulting effects within magnetic fields were studied using two-dimensional xz-projected
dose distributions. An energy spectrum analysis alongside the lateral x-axis was performed
both close to the beam entrance (z = 10 mm) and at the Bragg peak area. For comparison,
a γ-index evaluation using a criterion of 2%/2mm of the local maximum was performed,
comparing the Bragg peak area of a beam experiencing a 3 T magnetic field and without
a magnetic field, respectively. To do so, the dose distributions were aligned such that the
center of the Bragg-peak area coincided. Afterwards, to account for changing beam direc-
tions due to beam deflection, the nominal dose distributions were rotated, so that the beam
directions in the Bragg peak region coincided. In order to avoid artifacts due to noise, values
close to zero, being more than a factor of 7 lower than the maximal dose, were excluded
from the γ-index evaluation.

Magnetic fields can lead to noticeable dose deposition modifications at the boundaries
between the two materials due to the Electron Return Effect (ERE)21,23 . Effects of a 30 mm
air cavity slab, located 200 mm after the water phantom entrance were studied for 250 MeV
protons exposed to a homogeneous 3 T magnetic field. The electron production cut off was
set to 1 µm to investigate the effects of even very low-energetic, i.e. short-ranged electrons.
Percentage depth dose (PDD) curves and two-dimensional dose maps were used to study
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

the dose deposition difference at the material transitions.

Accepted Article
C. Secondary particles

Magnetic fields may not only affect the primary charged particles but also any charged
secondary particles, such as electrons or fragments, which can potentially change the dose
distribution. The simulation phantom was longitudinally divided into three equally spaced
sub-volumes (350×350×140 mm3 ) distributed alongside the beam path, in order to take into
account the progressive energy loss of the primary beam. Secondary electrons, helium and
oxygen fragments created during irradiation in the respective sub-volumes were recorded.
The produced secondary particles as well as their energy spectrum were analyzed and con-
verted into ranges according to the energy-range databases ESTAR, ASTAR and PSTAR3,7 .
The obtained ranges were evaluated to determine non-negligible track lengths which could
potentially impact the dose distribution within a magnetic field.

D. Numerical beam deflection calculation

For ion beam dose calculation in magnetic fields beam deflection curves yielding the lateral
beam deviation are of great interest. For clinical use full MC simulations and subsequent dose
map analyses are time-consuming. Thus, a fast numerical algorithm was developed. The
approximation of beam deflection curves was performed by solving the relativistic equations
of motion taking into account the Lorentz force

d ( )
⃗
(Γm0⃗v) = q ⃗v × B (1)
dt
( )− 12
|⃗
v|2
where Γ = 1− c2
is the Lorentz factor and m0 is the rest mass of a particle with
charge q and velocity ⃗v. Particle energy correction was performed after each propagation
dE
step, using the Bethe-Bloch formula ds
:

d⃗r
⃗vnew = ⃗vold − × (|⃗vold | − |⃗v(Γ′ )|) (2)
dx + dy + dz

with
∫ d
′ 1 dE
Γ = Γold − ds (3)
m0 0 ds
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

where d is the distance traveled in one step.

The Bethe-Bloch formula is sensitive with respect to the choice of correction terms below
Accepted Article
1 MeV. Protons with an energy of 1 MeV have a residual range in water of less than 0.03
mm. For such small residual ranges, the contribution to the lateral deviation even of high
angular deviations can be neglected. Therefore, a cut off was introduced at Ecut = 1 MeV.

The arising differential equations were iteratively solved by the Runge-Kutta (RK) algo-
rithm, a numerical, discrete forth-order method1 . The iterative calculation allows to account
for changing magnetic fields as well as heterogeneous tissues as present in a patient.

III. RESULTS

A. Beam shape effects

The beam shape for protons was found to differ from the shape expected in the presence
of magnetic fields. The resulting dose differences were located in two areas of the Bragg
peak region, showing a tilt of the dose distribution as illustrated in Fig. 2.

A γ-index evaluation of the dose distribution of a 250 MeV proton beam within a 3 T
field compared with the corresponding nominal dose distribution (see Fig. 2b), resulted in
a γmean (mean value of the γ distribution) of 0.6, with 14.4% of the values above 1 and
γ1% (1% of all points have an equal or higher γ value) of 1.8. For lower field strengths the
differences observed in the dose distributions were smaller and less pronounced, as shown in
Tab. I.

In the presence of magnetic fields, at beam entrance the initially mono-energetic beam
showed a constant and laterally symmetric energy distribution throughout the central beam
profile (see Fig. 3a). The central part of the 2D phase space containing most of the
protons was symmetric and circular, see Fig. 3a. Right before the Bragg peak – at a
penetration depth of 350 mm – the energy/proton distribution symmetry was lost and an
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

energy rise alongside the beam profile was observed (see Fig. 3b). The depicted data was
recorded perpendicular towards the incident particle energy. Protons on the outward beam
side showed energies of up to 20 MeV higher compared to the inner side of the rotation
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plane. This resulted in laterally increasing proton ranges, i.e. in a deformed Bragg peak
area shape. This effect was also reflected in the elliptically shaped and tilted phase space,
see Fig. 3b. Despite the lateral energy differences within the beam profile, the beam
profile was still mostly Gaussian shaped. At a distance of two sigma from the beam, differ-
ences of 3.5% were found in lateral symmetry. with deviations too small to be visible by eye.

Although the beam path was bent in the presence of a magnetic field, a deformation of
the Bragg peak area itself was not observed for carbon ions.

200 1 30 2.5
150 0.9
Lateral beam offset [mm]

20
Lateral beam offset [mm]

0.8 2
100
Relative dose [a.u.]

0.7

Gamma index
10
50 0.6 1.5
0 0.5 0
0.4 1
-50 -10
0.3
-100 0.5
0.2 -20
-150 0.1
-30 0
-200 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 350 360 370 380
Penetration depth [mm] Penetration depth [mm]

(a) (b)

Figure 2. (a) Dose deposition for a 250 MeV proton beam in water encountering a 3 T magnetic
field. The smaller picture displays the zoomed Bragg peak region. (b) γ-index distribution using
a criteria of 2%/2mm compared to a Bragg peak region without magnetic field which was rotated
and offset to match the beam angle and position at the Bragg peak area.

B. Numerical Beam path calculation

The lateral and longitudinal offsets of the Bragg peak defined at the dose maximum,
of the incident particle beams are summarized in Tab. II for protons and in Tab. III for
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

240 52

200 48
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44
160
Energy per proton [MeV]

Energy per proton [MeV]

40
120
36
80
32
ͽ15 ͽ10 ͽ5 0 5 10 15 ͽ120 ͽ115 ͽ110 ͽ105 ͽ100 ͽ95 ͽ90 ͽ85 ͽ80 ͽ75 ͽ70
247 1 1
70

Proton count N/Np

Proton count N/Np

60
246 10-1 10-1
50
-2
10 40 10-2
245
30
10-3 10-3
ͽ15 ͽ10 ͽ5 0 5 10 15 0.14ͽ120 ͽ115 ͽ110 ͽ105 ͽ100 ͽ95 ͽ90 ͽ85 ͽ80 ͽ75 ͽ70

0.6
Proton count N/Np

Proton count N/Np

0.1
0.4
0.06
0.2
0.02
0
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 -120 -110 -100 -90 -80 -70
Lateral x axis [mm] Lateral x axis [mm]

(a) (b)

Figure 3. Energy spectrum of a 250 MeV proton beam traversing a water phantom in a 3 T magnetic
field, (a) after the water entrance at 10 mm depth and (b) before the Bragg peak at 350 mm depth
recorded perpendicular to the incident beam direction. Each graph depicting from top to bottom
the energy per proton distribution, phase space and particle count distribution.

carbon ions, respectively.

Applying the numerical beam deflection algorithm including the particle energy loss cor-
rection presented above, resulted in a very good agreement with the Monte Carlo calculated
reference curves (see Fig. 4). For protons a mean error of 1.1% was determined, with a
standard deviation of 0.6%. The respective values for carbon ions are 0.9% for the mean
error with a standard deviation of 0.5%. The agreement was found to depend only slightly
on the incident particle energy, with a maximum error of less than 2 % for the highest initial
energies and magnetic field strengths.
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Mag. field γmean γ1% γ > 1 γmax

0.35 T 0.3 0.9 0.6 1.8

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1T 0.3 1.0 1.0 2.0
3T 0.6 1.8 14.4 2.1

Table I. γ-index comparison of the dose distribution of a beam experiencing a magnetic field and a
reference beam rotated to coincide with the Bragg peak.

Magnetic field 60 MeV 150 MeV 250 MeV

[mm] [mm] [mm]

lat. 0.0 0.0 0.0

0T
long. 30.6 156.5 376.5
lat. 0.2 2.5 11.8
0.35 T
long. 30.6 156.0 375.0
lat. 0.5 7.3 32.8
1T
long. 30.6 155.0 373.0
lat. 1.4 22.8 98.9
3T
long. 30.5 153.0 356.0

Table II. Simulated lateral and longitudinal Bragg peak locations for a proton beam in water of 60,
150 and 250 MeV initial energy for 4 magnetic field strengths.

C. Secondary particle range

The energy distributions of secondary particles are shown in Fig. 5 for electrons, Helium
and Oxygen ions. Ranges below 0.1 mm were not simulated for efficiency reasons. The
mean electron energy of 0.18 MeV corresponded to a range of 0.36 mm, while the maximum
energies observed at 0.7 MeV corresponded to an electron range of 2.8 mm. In the Bragg
peak region the maximum electron energy dropped to 0.3 MeV corresponding to 0.84 mm.
For Helium nuclei the mean energy of about 1.25 MeV/u corresponded to a range of
0.04 mm, while the maximum energy observed of 10 MeV/u correlated to a track length of
16
1.24 mm. O fragments showed to be low-energetic with maximum energies of about 0.06
MeV/u, resulting a negligible range in the order of µm.
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Magnetic field 120 MeV/u 250 MeV/u 400 MeV/u

[mm] [mm] [mm]
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lat. 0.0 0.0 0.0
0T
long. 34.8 124.5 270.1
lat. 0.0 0.7 2.4
0.35 T
long. 34.8 124.4 269.9
lat. 0.2 1.9 6.9
1T
long. 34.8 124.3 269.4
lat. 0.7 5.7 20.7
3T
long. 34.8 124.1 269.2

Table III. Simulated lateral and longitudinal Bragg peak locations for a carbon beam in water of
120, 250 and 400 MeV/u initial energy for 4 magnetic field strengths.

10
250 MeV - MC 400 MeV/u - MC
0 250 MeV - RK 400 MeV/u - RK
250 MeV - RK without EC 0 250 MeV/u - MC
Lateral beam offset [mm]

Lateral beam offset [mm]

150 MeV - MC 250 MeV/u - RK

-20 150 MeV - RK 120 MeV/u - MC
60 MeV - MC -10 120 MeV/u - RK
60 MeV - RK
-40
-20

-60
-30

-80 -40

-100 -50

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Penetration depth [mm] Penetration depth [mm]

(a) (b)

Figure 4. Comparison of the Runge-Kutta calculation of the beam deflection for a (a) 60, 150 and
250 MeV proton beam and a (b) 120, 250 and 400 MeV/u carbon ion beam in water experiencing a
magnetic field of 3 T. The solid lines represent the dose maximum at the given penetration depths,
while the dashed curve depicts the numerical calculated values. The rise at the end of the proton
reference data is due to a deformation of the Bragg peak area described above which was not
modeled in the numerical approach. In (b) the Bragg peak depth is indicated by a small bar.
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Residual range [µm]

4.5
Volume 1: 0-140mm 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
4 Volume 2: 140-280mm 2.5e-02
Volume 3: 280-420mm
3.5
Accepted Article
6.0e-04
Electron count N/Np

2.0e-02

α particle count N/Np

3

O count N/Np
2.5 4.5e-04
1.5e-02
2
3.0e-04 1.0e-02
1.5

16
1
1.5e-04 5.0e-03
0.5
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
Residual range [mm] Residual range [mm]

(a) (b)

Figure 5. Residual range distribution of (a) secondary electrons measured in the beam entrance,
plateau and Bragg peak region and (b) helium and oxygen ions of a 250 MeV proton beam in water.

D. Material boundaries

The laterally integrated dose deposition for a 250 MeV proton beam with and without a
3 T field is depicted in Fig. 6. Directly before the air cavity a dose increase at the left side
of the water-air boundary was observed for the 3 T field. This peak corresponded to a dose
increase of about 6% of the lateral integrated dose, taking into account all contributions of
this slice. However, the corresponding dose difference in the center of the beam was found
to be less than 2%. For a voxel size of 1 × 1 × 1mm3 , similar values than reported earlier23
were found.

IV. DISCUSSION

GATE/Geant4 allows the use of different physics lists for simulations. A physics list
recommended by the Geant4 collaboration was used5,8 . While the validity of the use of
GATE/Geant4 for proton beam therapy was already shown, so far no experimental data
of a proton beam in a magnetic field is available. However, Geant4 is heavily used in
high energy physics and thoroughly tested in magnetic fields9 . MR guided proton therapy
poses additional challenges compared to MR guided photon based therapy, since the primary
treatment beam itself is directly influenced by the magnetic field. The origin of the observed
dosimetric difference at the Bragg peak is Multiple Coulomb scattering, leading to an energy
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

Normalized total dose deposition [a.u.]

1 0.36

0.35
0.8
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0.34

0.6 0.33

0.32
0.4

0.2

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Penetration depth [mm]

Figure 6. Laterally integrated dose distribution for a 250 MeV proton beam in a water phantom
with 30 mm air cavity, with and without a magnetic field. The blue line corresponds to an applied
magnetic field of 3 T, the red dashed continuous line corresponds to no applied magnetic field. Due
to magnetic bending, the range of the particle beams does not coincide.

variance resulting in the well known range straggling. The presence of a magnetic field acted
like an energy separator, guiding the lower energetic particles towards the inner side of the
bending plane. The effect was immediately obvious for strong magnetic fields and high initial
particle energies, but became less dominant for lower field strengths and particle energies.
This is due to the higher particle range, were even a smaller angular direction change results
in an overall larger lateral deviation. For magnetic fields in the order of 0.35 T, which is
a common field strength of clinically used open MR scanners, it might be even possible to
neglect this effect for dose calculation.

Due to their increased mass carbon ions were much less sensitive to range straggling. In
addition, the lower charge to mass ratio resulted in a much lower sensitivity to magnetic
fields, e.g. smaller overall bending radii and consequently less difference between particles.
Therefore, a deformation of the Bragg peak area as for protons was not observed.

As can be seen in Fig. 4a) the reference curve tilts upwards at the Bragg peak position.
This was caused by the deformation of the Bragg peak area described above, resulting in
a shift of the dose maximum, commonly used to determine the beam center. As this was
a multi-particle effect it was not modeled directly by our pencil beam (PB) algorithm, but
could be corrected in a dose calculation algorithm e.g. by calculating more trajectories with
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

slightly different energies.

Although such magnetic field effects can be described using MC methods, MC based
Accepted Article
dose calculation requires significant amount of time and resources, making it challenging to
implement in clinical routine. Up to now, most treatment planning systems in particle beam
therapy still use fluence based semi-analytical algorithms for dose calculation. Especially
for optimization purposes such PB algorithms will continue to be employed due to their
paramount calculation speed.

A previously published method27 reported lateral deviations of the beam path of 3.7 %
for a 200 MeV proton beam, whereas our algorithm, for the same set-up, could reduce the
lateral deviation by half, to less than 1.8 % for a comparable magnetic field strength. For
comparison, a simple scaling by the applied magnetic field to convert lateral offsets between
magnetic fields resulted in differences of up to 5% with respect to the reference curves.
The good agreement confirms the suitability of the presented algorithm for deflection curve
calculation.

In literature23 no difference of the electron spectra resulting from proton beams was re-
ported, which might be explained by the use of higher cuts, limited data points as well as the
generally lower energies investigated. As can be easily seen in Fig. 5a, the secondary elec-
tron energy distribution shifted towards lower energies at progressing penetration depths.
Energy and momentum conservation caused the produced secondary electrons to be less
energetic, as primary protons progressively lost energy during penetration. Only electrons
resulting from all charged secondary particles were found to have non-negligible ranges,
potentially influencing the dose distribution shape at boundary regions. Secondary protons
were not analyzed in detail, as they behave similar to the primary protons and no additional
effects were found.

For carbon ions, more secondary fragments were created due to the fragmentation of
the primary beam particles. However, all fragments heavier than protons were found to
be negligible in terms of residual range (median range smaller than 0.05 mm). Electron
distributions were found to be of similar energy and range as from proton beams. Secondary
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

protons exhibited high particle ranges. However, only about 5 % of the incident carbon ions
created a proton and the smaller dose contribution of protons compared to carbon ions,
limited the change in the overall dose contribution.
Accepted Article
Further investigation confirmed, that the dose increase at material borders was caused
by the returning of high energy electrons. However, a 10 MV photon beam showed almost
7 times higher dose differences compared to protons. It should be kept in mind that the
presented case, employing the highest proton energy as well as the strongest magnetic field,
pronounced the differences. For lower energies and magnetic fields the effects should be
even smaller. This effect will result in a lower skin dose when using charged particles as
opposed to photons, as reported earlier20,21 . The absence of an higher entrance dose at the
distal end of the cavity of the air cavity depicted in Fig. 6, can be explained by the residual
electron range of less than 2 mm and the applied magnetic field, hindering electrons to
reach the distal end of the cavity. However, the impact of cavities needs to be studied in
more detail to explore the effect on varying cavity size, position and incident particle energy.

The magnetic field of a diagnostic MR scanner was recently modeled, which could be
used as a template for future proton MR combinations19 . It was demonstrated that only a
small volume of the magnetic field inside such a hybrid system will be homogeneous. This
is especially important as fringe fields might start to influence the treatment beam already
quite far away from the patient. Therefore, non-homogeneous magnetic fields need to be
taken into account by any dose calculation algorithm.
In addition, there may be reverse influences of magnetic fields on transport lines and noz-
zle elements, which are beyond the scope of this manuscript. The iterative calculation of the
particle propagation presented here, allows to account for varying environment parameters
at each step. The calculation speed of the presented algorithm should not be influenced by
inhomogeneous magnetic fields or density heterogeneities, as Eq. 1 is evaluated on a per step
basis. Consequently, the significant calculation time difference will be preserved. Therefore,
the presented algorithm is well suited for taking into account the magnetic field effects in the
presence of a clinical environment, either in final dose calculation of a treatment planning
system, or for intermediate dose calculation during inverse treatment planning.
 Magnetic field effects on particle beams

V. CONCLUSION

In the presence of a magnetic field energy differences within the primary ion beam caused
Accepted Article
deformations of the Bragg peak area. For high initial energies and strong magnetic fields
these effects can not be neglected. Range analysis of secondary charged particles showed that
only electrons influence the dose distribution, especially at material borders. However, the
impact was found to be below 2% at any given voxel, for the highest energies and magnetic
fields evaluated. The presented fast numerical method is feasible for dose calculation of
particle beam in the presence of magnetic fields, taking into account varying, heterogeneous
magnetic fields and material heterogeneities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The computational results presented have been achieved in part using the Vienna Scien-
tific Cluster (VSC). Special thanks goes to MOCCAMED group for providing access to their
cluster enabling MC simulations and evaluations in reasonable time. The financial support
by the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy and the National Foundation for
Research, Technology and Development is gratefully acknowledged.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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