Fast beam range measurements are required to maximize the time available for patient treatment, given that the beam range requires verification with respect to quality assurance to maintain accelerator commissioning s...Fast beam range measurements are required to maximize the time available for patient treatment, given that the beam range requires verification with respect to quality assurance to maintain accelerator commissioning standards and ensure patient safety. A novel beam range monitor based on a plastic scintillator and multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) arrays is therefore proposed in this paper. The monitor was constructed using 128 plastic scintillator films with a thickness of 1 mm and an active area of 50 × 50 mm^(2). A customized MPPC array read the scintillation light of each film. The advantage of dividing the active detector volume into films is that it intercepts the particle beam and enables direct differential light yield measurement in each film, in addition to depth-light curve generation without the need for image analysis A GEANT4 simulation, including scintillator quenching effects, was implemented, and the results revealed that Birks’ law exhibited a slight little influence on the position of the beam range, only changing the shape and absolute normalization of the Bragg curve, which is appropriate for the calculation of the beam range using the depth-light curve. The performance of the monitor was evaluated using a heavy-ion medical machine in Wuwei City, Gansu Province, China. The beam range measurement accuracy of the monitor was 1 mm, and the maximum difference between the measured and reference ranges was less than0.2%, thus indicating that the monitor can meet clinica carbon ion therapy requirements.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.11675232 and 12175286)。
文摘Fast beam range measurements are required to maximize the time available for patient treatment, given that the beam range requires verification with respect to quality assurance to maintain accelerator commissioning standards and ensure patient safety. A novel beam range monitor based on a plastic scintillator and multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) arrays is therefore proposed in this paper. The monitor was constructed using 128 plastic scintillator films with a thickness of 1 mm and an active area of 50 × 50 mm^(2). A customized MPPC array read the scintillation light of each film. The advantage of dividing the active detector volume into films is that it intercepts the particle beam and enables direct differential light yield measurement in each film, in addition to depth-light curve generation without the need for image analysis A GEANT4 simulation, including scintillator quenching effects, was implemented, and the results revealed that Birks’ law exhibited a slight little influence on the position of the beam range, only changing the shape and absolute normalization of the Bragg curve, which is appropriate for the calculation of the beam range using the depth-light curve. The performance of the monitor was evaluated using a heavy-ion medical machine in Wuwei City, Gansu Province, China. The beam range measurement accuracy of the monitor was 1 mm, and the maximum difference between the measured and reference ranges was less than0.2%, thus indicating that the monitor can meet clinica carbon ion therapy requirements.
