Speaker
Description
MedAustron is a center for ion therapy and research in Wiener Neustadt, located about 50km south of Vienna, the capital of Austria. The facility provides three beam lines for cancer treatment with proton beams at energies up to 252.7 MeV as well as carbon ion beams up to 400 MeV/u.
In addition to this medical application, the facility features a further beamline, which is exclusively reserved for non-clinical research. The research beam line is currently being commissioned for even higher proton energies of up to 800MeV.
Currently, treatment planning for proton therapy is based on x-ray computed tomography, which implies certain sources of inaccuracy in calculation of stopping power (SP). A more precise method to acquire the SP is to directly use high energy protons and perform proton computed tomography (pCT). With this method, the ions are tracked before entering and after leaving the patient and finally their residual energy is measured at the very end.
Therefore, a pCT demonstrator, comprising a tracking telescope made from double-sided silicon strip detectors and a residual energy calorimeter was set up and recently, first measurements with this pCT prototype were performed in a beam test at MedAustron.
This contribution introduces the principle of ion imaging with proton beams in general as well as the design of the pCT prototype. Moreover, first results from resent test beams and ideas for future developments will be presented.
| Submission declaration | Original and unpublished |
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