Design of a Rotating Facility for Extra-Corporal Treatment of an Explanted Liver with Disseminated Metastases by BNCT with an Epithermal Neutron Beam

Abstract

In 2001, at the TRIGA reactor of the University of Pavia (Italy), a patient suffering from diffuse liver metastases was successfully treated by BNCT. This encouraging outcome stimulated the Essen/Petten BNCT-group to investigate whether such an extra-corporal irradiation could be performed at the BNCT irradiation facility at the HFR Petten, which has very different irradiation characteristics to the Pavia facility. A computational study has been carried out. A rotating PMMA container with the liver, surrounded by PMMA and graphite, is simulated using the Monte Carlo code MCNP. Due to the rotation and neutron moderation of the PMMA container, the main conditions for treatment as reported from the Pavia experiment, i.e. a thermal neutron fluence of 4x10 12 +- 20%cm-2, can be closely met in an acceptable time, which, depending from the defined conditions, is between 140 and 180 minutes.