Abstract: The Heavy-ion cancer therapy, as a new radiotherapy approach, cures malignant tumours by irradi- ating tumours with high-energy charged heavy-ion beams produced by large-scale heavy-ion accelerators. In com- parison with traditional and conventional radiotherapies, the heavy-ion therapy has a unique Bragg peak as well as high relative biological effectiveness（RBE） , thus it has attracted lots of attentions and has been one of the frontiers in radiotherapies. Meanwhile, as a highlight of nuclear technologies, the heavy-ion therapy has often been intro- duced into the relevant training programs. Due to the need of large-scale heavy-ion accelerators, however, it is hard to have such educational experiments in college. Here we report a virtual experiment for demonstrating the general concept of heavy-ion therapy with the FLUKA Monte-Carlo simulations. In this experiment, it is possible to simulate the whole process of carbon ion radiotherapy, from optimizing the heavy-ion beam to finalizing the best treatment. This experiment is demonstrated to be very helpful for students to understand the interaction of heavy ion with matter and the principle of heavy-ion therapy.

Key words: interaction of heavy ions with matter, heavy-ion cancer therapy, Monte-Carlo simulation