Development of a new 3-dimensional scintillating detector for patient treatment quality control in pencil beam scanning proton therapy
Abstract
In this work, we developed a three-dimensional (3D) scintillation system, whose fast response and high sensitivity allow the measurement of pencil beam (PB) characteristics (position, energy and intensity in terms of monitor units - MU) for pencil beam scanning proton therapy. The system consists of a 10 × 10 × 10 cm$^{3}$ scintillator cube that produces visible light when irradiated with PBs. A high-speed camera records the scintillation distribution and a mirror positioned at 45° to the cube allows visualization of two orthogonal faces of the cube. The measurements demonstrated the ability of our system to measure beam characteristics for intensities as low as 2·10$^{−3}$ MU in a single irradiation. Standard deviations of less than 300 μm were found for the X and Y PB positions, of approximately 150 keV for energy and of less than 5·10$^{−3}$ MU for intensity. These measurements were then successfully used to verify the compliance of the PBs delivery with the treatment plan, thus making our system a fast and efficient verification tool.
Domains
Physics [physics]Origin | Publisher files allowed on an open archive |
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