Real-time delivered dose assessment in carbon ion therapy of moving targets.

. Real-time adaptive particle therapy is being investigated as a means to maximize the treatment delivery accuracy. To react to dosimetric errors, a system for fast and reliable verification of the agreement between planned and delivered doses is essential.

Performance of LGAD strip detectors for particle counting of therapeutic proton beams.

. The performance of silicon detectors with moderate internal gain, named low-gain avalanche diodes (LGADs), was studied to investigate their capability to discriminate and count single beam particles at high fluxes, in view of future applications for beam characterization and on-line beam monitoring in proton therapy..

Variation of the relative biological effectiveness with fractionation in proton therapy: Analysis of prostate cancer response.

Background: In treatment planning for proton therapy a constant Relative Biological Effectiveness (RBE) of 1.1 is used, disregarding variations with linear energy transfer, clinical endpoint, or fractionation.

Purpose: To present a methodology to analyze the variation of RBE with fractionation from clinical data of tumor control probability (TCP) and to apply it to study the response of prostate cancer to proton therapy.

Calibration method and performance of a time-of-flight detector to measure absolute beam energy in proton therapy.

Background: The beam energy is one of the most significant parameters in particle therapy since it is directly correlated to the particles' penetration depth inside the patient. Nowadays, the range accuracy is guaranteed by offline routine quality control checks mainly performed with water phantoms, 2D detectors with PMMA wedges, or multi-layer ionization chambers. The latter feature low sensitivity, slow collection time, and response dependent on external parameters, which represent limiting factors for the quality controls of beams delivered with fast energy switching modalities, as foreseen in future treatments.

A new detector for the beam energy measurement in proton therapy: a feasibility study.

The proof of concept of a new device, capable of determining in a few seconds the energy of clinical proton beams by measuring the time of flight (ToF) of protons, is presented. The prototype consists of two thin ultra fast silicon detector (UFSD) pads, aligned along the beam direction in a telescope configuration and readout by a digitizer. The method developed for extracting the energy at the isocenter from the measured ToF, validated by Monte Carlo simulations, and the procedure used to calibrate the system are also presented and discussed in detail.