Supervisor: Søren Pape Møller

We define radiation as the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or a material medium. When this energy is high enough to liberate electrons from atoms or molecules we talk about ionizing radiation. This ionizing radiation can be used to treat localized tumors, this treatment is called radiotherapy. This is an effective way to treat some types of cancer due to the nature of the cancer cell. The main goal of radiotherapy is to damage the DNA of the cancer cell, which will lead to cell death. There is a lot of different types of radiotherapy, however, we will focus on one type: particle therapy. More specifically, during this colloquium, we will look into particle therapy that uses protons and carbon ions. In order to acknowledge the differences between both types of particle therapy the so-called Bragg’s curves (see Figure below) for protons and carbon ions will be presented and discussed and the same will be done for the accelerators used to generate this radiation.