A novel method for assessment of fragmentation and beam-material interactions in helium ion radiotherapy with a miniaturized setup

• Verfasst von: Gallas, Raya R. [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Aricó, Giulia [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Burigo, Lucas Norberto [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Gehrke, Tim [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Martišíková, Mária [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: A novel method for assessment of fragmentation and beam-material interactions in helium ion radiotherapy with a miniaturized setup
• Verf.angabe: Raya R. Gallas, Giulia Arico, Lucas N. Burigo, Tim Gehrke, Jan Jakůbek, Carlos Granja, Daniel Tureček, Maria Martišíková
• Jahr: 2017
• Umfang: 11 S.
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Fussnoten: Available online 21 September 2017 ; Gesehen am 14.06.2018
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Physica medica
• Ort Quelle: Amsterdam : Elsevier, 1996
• Jahr Quelle: 2017
• Band/Heft Quelle: 42(2017), Seite 116-126
• ISSN Quelle: 1724-191X
• DOI: doi:10.1016/j.ejmp.2017.09.126
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Sach-SW: Heavy-ion therapy
• Sach-SW: Helium beams
• Sach-SW: Ion spectroscopy
• Sach-SW: Pixelated semiconductor detector Timepix
• K10plus-PPN: 1576346137

Abstract

Radiotherapy with protons and carbon ions enables to deliver dose distributions of high conformation to the target. Treatment with helium ions has been suggested due to their physical and biological advantages. A reliable benchmarking of the employed physics models with experimental data is required for treatment planning. However, experimental data for helium interactions is limited, in part due to the complexity and large size of conventional experimental setups. We present a novel method for the investigation of helium interactions with matter using miniaturized instrumentation based on highly integrated pixel detectors. The versatile setup consisted of a monitoring detector in front of the PMMA phantom of varying thickness and a detector stack for investigation of outgoing particles. The ion type downstream from the phantom was determined by high-resolution pattern recognition analysis of the single particle signals in the pixelated detectors. The fractions of helium and hydrogen ions behind the used targets were determined. As expected for the stable helium nucleus, only a minor decrease of the primary ion fluence along the target depth was found. E.g. the detected fraction of hydrogen ions on axis of a 220MeV/u 4He beam was below 6% behind 24.5cm of PMMA. Monte-Carlo simulations using Geant4 reproduce the experimental data on helium attenuation and yield of helium fragments qualitatively, but significant deviations were found for some combinations of target thickness and beam energy. The presented method is promising to contribute to the reduction of the uncertainty of treatment planning for helium ion radiotherapy.