Biophysical investigations of therapeutic proton beams

The KFA programme to gather the necessary dosimetric and biophysical information to develop optimal dose calculation routines for conformal proton radiation therapy is introduced. First experiments in a water phantom and with a plastic phantom are presented for incident protons of 175.5 MeV. Furthermore, the first detailed biophysical investigations on the RBE dependence of monoenergetic and energetically spread out proton beams is described and the results are discussed.