Sensitivity of silicon-to-water dose conversion and Bragg-peak metrics to stopping-power datasets in proton dosimetry

Abstract

Accurate proton dosimetry requires consistent stopping-power data for detector-to-water conversion and Monte Carlo radiation transport. We quantify the sensitivity of water-to-silicon stopping-power ratios, converted dose-to-water distributions, and Bragg-peak metrics to the stopping-power dataset for a 67.5 MeV pristine proton beam in water. PHITS simulations used SRIM-2013, PSTAR/NIST, ATIMA, and TDDFT-Penn stopping powers up to 10 MeV, together with a common SBETHE-based extension at higher energies. The water-to-silicon stopping-power ratio showed relative entrance-to-distal variations of 17.40%$-$22.10%. Conversion of normalized PTW silicon-diode percentage-depth-ionization data yielded relative percentage-depth-dose curves with a common maximum at 36.86 mm, consistent with the experimental Bragg-peak depth of (36.81 $\pm$ 0.15) mm. The converted curves were approximately 3% below the reference throughout the entrance and plateau regions, while deviations of up to 2.1% occurred near the Bragg peak. Direct PHITS calculations predicted Bragg-peak depths of 36.575$-$36.675 mm; only the TDDFT-Penn result lay within the quoted experimental uncertainty. These results show that stopping-power treatment affects the magnitude of the converted dose more strongly than the Bragg-peak position does, and that it should be harmonized or explicitly included in uncertainty budgets for proton-beam calibration, commissioning, quality assurance, and Monte Carlo validation.