Stochastic dose fluctuations in boron neutron capture therapy with heterogeneous boron distributions

Abstract

Dose fluctuations at the cellular scale in boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) arise from stochastic neutron capture and spatially heterogeneous boron distributions. This study develops a stochastic framework combining energy-deposition responses from Geant4 simulations, a Poisson capture process, and spatially correlated lognormal boron fields to investigate nuclear dose variance and zero-hit probability. The results show that the variance contribution from stochastic neutron capture increases linearly with neutron fluence, whereas the contribution from boron heterogeneity increases quadratically. These distinct scaling behaviors produce a correlation-length-dependent crossover between the dominant sources of dose fluctuations. For a heterogeneity amplitude of $H=0.8$ and a correlation length of $ξ=3\,μ\mathrm{m}$, the crossover occurs at approximately $1.50\times10^{12}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$, while the ensemble relative dose variance approaches a plateau of $0.160$ at high fluence. Boron heterogeneity also increases the probability that a nucleus receives no energy deposition from alpha--lithium reaction products. At $ξ=6\,μ\mathrm{m}$ and $Φ_n=3\times10^{11}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$, the zero-hit probability is $40.49\%$ higher than that for a homogeneous boron distribution with the same mean concentration. This study shows that spatial boron correlations and stochastic neutron capture influence nuclear dose fluctuations and zero-hit statistics beyond what can be characterized by mean boron concentration alone.