Real time monitoring of the Bragg-peak position in ion therapy by means of single photon detection

For real-time monitoring of the longitudinal position of the Bragg-peak during an ion therapy treatment, a novel non-invasive technique has been recently proposed that exploits the detection of prompt -rays issued from nuclear fragmentation. Two series of experiments have been performed at the GANIL and GSI facilities with 95 MeV/u and 305 MeV/u 12C6+ ion beams stopped in PMMA and water phantoms. In both experiments a clear correlation was obtained between the carbon ion range and the prompt photon profile. Additionally, an extensive study has been performed to investigate whether a prompt neutron component may be correlated with the carbon ion range. No such correlation was found. The present paper demonstrates that a collimated set-up can be used to detect single photons by means of time-of-flight measurements, at those high energies typical for ion therapy. Moreover, the applicability of the technique both at cyclotron and synchrotron facilities is shown. It is concluded that the detected photon count rates provide sufficiently high statistics to allow real-time control of the longitudinal position of the Bragg-peak under clinical conditions

Monte Carlo Simulations of Prompt-Gamma Emission During Carbon Ion Irradiation

accepted for publication in IEEE TNSMonte Carlo simulations based on the Geant4 toolkit (version 9.1) were performed to study the emission of secondary prompt-gamma rays produced by nuclear reactions during carbon ion-beam therapy. These simulations were performed along with an experimental program and instrumentation developments which aim at designing a prompt-gamma ray device for real-time control of hadrontherapy. The objective of the present study is twofold: firstly, to present the features of the prompt-gamma radiation in the case of carbon ion irradiation; secondly, to simulate the experimental setup and to compare measured and simulated counting rates corresponding to four different experiments. For each experiment, we found that simulations overestimate prompt-gamma ray detection yields by a factor of 12. Uncertainties in fragmentation cross sections and binary cascade model cannot explain such discrepancies. The so-called “photon evaporation” model is therefore questionable and its modification is currently in progress

A novel technique for real time monitoring of the Bragg-peak position in ion therapy by means of single photon detection

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