The aim of this work was to assess the performance of a prototype compact gamma camera (MediPROBE) based on a CdTe semiconductor hybrid pixel detector, for coded aperture imaging. This probe can be adopted for various tasks in nuclear medicine such as preoperative sentinel lymph node localization, breast imaging with Tc radiotracers and thyroid imaging, and in general in radioguided surgery tasks. The hybrid detector is an assembly of a 1-mm thick CdTe semiconductor detector bump-bonded to a photon-counting CMOS readout circuit of the Medipix2 series or energy-sensitive Timepix detector.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParticle therapy is a therapy technique that exploits protons or light ions to irradiate tumor targets with high accuracy. Protons and C ions are already used for irradiation in clinical routine, while new ions like He and O are currently being considered. Despite the indisputable physical and biological advantages of such ion beams, the planning of charged particle therapy treatments is challenged by range uncertainties, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProton and carbon ion beams are used in the clinical practice for external radiotherapy treatments achieving, for selected indications, promising and superior clinical results with respect to x-ray based radiotherapy. Other ions, like [Formula: see text] have recently been considered as projectiles in particle therapy centres and might represent a good compromise between the linear energy transfer and the radiobiological effectiveness of [Formula: see text] ion and proton beams, allowing improved tumour control probability and minimising normal tissue complication probability. All the currently used p, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] ion beams allow achieving sharp dose gradients on the boundary of the target volume, however the accurate dose delivery is sensitive to the patient positioning and to anatomical variations with respect to photon therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNowadays there is a growing interest in particle therapy treatments exploiting light ion beams against tumors due to their enhanced relative biological effectiveness and high space selectivity. In particular promising results are obtained by the use of He projectiles. Unlike the treatments performed using protons, the beam ions can undergo a fragmentation process when interacting with the atomic nuclei in the patient body.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCharged particle beams are used in particle therapy (PT) to treat oncological patients due to their selective dose deposition in tissues with respect to the photons and electrons used in conventional radiotherapy. Heavy (Z > 1) PT beams can additionally be exploited for their high biological effectiveness in killing cancer cells. Nowadays, protons and carbon ions are used in PT clinical routines.
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