A prototype of pCT scanner: first tests

Proton therapy technique for cancer treatment offers a high selectivity with respect to conventional radiotherapy with X- and γ-rays due to the properties of the interaction of protons with matter. Very accurate and precise treatment plans and a good control on the dose deposition are required to exploit the full potential of the technique. The substitution of the currently used X-ray Computed Tomography (xCT) by proton Computed Tomography (pCT) in the design of treatment plans would allow for a reduction in proton range uncertainties. This would make possible an important improvement in the accuracy and precision of treatment plans. With this aim, a prototype of pCT scanner is under study. It includes two tracking detectors which provide information on the proton trajectories and a residual energy detector to determine the energy loss while traversing the object scanned. A proof-of-concept experiment has been performed using low-energy protons and a simplified prototype with only the two tracking detectors. The results obtained in the measurement are presented and discussed

Scattering of 15C on 208Pb at energies near the Coulomb barrier: Study of the experimental device response via the 12C+208Pb scattering

There are evidences that the 15C nucleus has an extended neutron distribution or a "neutron halo", but this situation is far from clear. If 15C has 1n-halo, the scattering dynamics should be affected and the angular distribution of the elastic channels should be sensitive to coupling effects due to the halo configuration. The objetive of this study is to understand the role of the halo in 15C by investigating its dynamical response in intense electric fields at energies close to the Coulomb barrier. For this purpose experiment IS619 was conducted performing the 15C + 208Pb elastic scattering reaction at HIE-ISOLDE, CERN. The beam energy was 4.37 MeV/u, which is very close to the Coulomb barrier of the system. The experimental setup used was the global detection system GLORIA, a six silicon telescopes array enable to measure the energy and angular distributions of the scattered particles. During the experiment, the 12C+208Pb scattering at 4.37 MeV/u was measured for calibration. The results of the 12C+208Pb measurement were used to fine-tune the geometry of the experimental setup and it is presented in this contribution