Experimental comparison of clinically used ion beams for imaging applications using a range telescope.

Experimental comparison of clinically used ion beams for imaging applications using a range telescope. Phys Med Biol. 2020 Apr 08;: Authors: Kopp B, Meyer S, Gianoli C, Magallanes L, Voss B, Brons S, Parodi K Abstract In particle therapy, the X-ray based treatment planning converting photon attenuation values to relative stopping power ratio (RSP) introduces clinically relevant range uncertainties. Recently, novel imaging technologies using transmission ion beams have been investigated to directly assess the water equivalent thickness (WET) of tissue, showing improved accuracy in RSP reconstruction, while potentially reducing the imaging dose. Due to their greater availability, protons have been mostly used for ion imaging. To this end, in this work, the influence of three ion species (protons, helium and carbon ions) on the image quality of radiographic WET retrieval has been explored with a dedicated experimental setup and compared to Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Three phantom setups with different tissue interfaces and features have been irradiated with clinically validated proton, helium and carbon ion pencil beams under comparable imaging dose and beam settings at the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center. Ion radiographies (iRADs) were acquired with an integration mode detector, that functions as a range telescope with 61 parallel plate ionization chambers. For comparison, experiments were reproduced in-silico with FLUKA Monte Ca...
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research
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