The Absorbed Dose and Dose Equivalent from Negatively and Positively Charged Pions in the Energy Range 10 to 2000 MeV

Nucleon-meson cascade calculations have been carried out for broad beams of monoenergetic negatively and positively charged pions normally incident on a semi-infinite slab of tissue 30-cm thick, and the absorbed doses and dose equivalents as a function of depth in the tissue are presented. Results are given for incident energies of 10, 30, 84, 150, 500, 1000, and 2000 MeV. For the lower incident energies (≤84 MeV), the pion range is <30 cm in tissue, and peaks in the absorbed doses and dose equivalents, due to the reaction products produced by the nuclear capture of the stopped negatively charged pions and to the decay products of the stopped positively charged pions, are clearly evident.