Coupling of Geant4-DNA physics models into the GATE Monte Carlo platform: Evaluation of radiation-induced damage for clinical and preclinical radiation therapy beams

The GATE Monte Carlo simulation platform based on the Geant4 toolkit is in constant improvement for dosimetric calculations. In this paper, we present the integration of Geant4-DNA processes into the GATE 7.0 platform in the objective to perform multi-scale simulations (from macroscopic to nanometer scale). We simulated three types of clinical and preclinical beams: a 6 MeV electron clinical beam, a X-ray irradiator beam and a clinical proton beam for which we validated depth dose distributions against measurements in water. Frequencies of energy depositions and DNA damage were evaluated using a specific algorithm in charge of allocating energy depositions to atoms constituting DNA molecules represented by their PDB (Protein Data Bank) description. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.