Implemenation of a non-invasive online beam monitor at a 60 MeV proton therapy beamline

Abstract

To fully ex­ploit the ad­van­ta­geous dose dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­files of ion ra­dio­ther­apy, an exact knowl­edge of the beam prop­er­ties through on­line beam mon­i­tor­ing is es­sen­tial, en­sur­ing thus an ef­fec­tive dose de­liv­ery to the pa­tient. One po­ten­tial can­di­date for an on­line beam mon­i­tor is the LHCb Ver­tex Lo­ca­tor (VELO). This de­tec­tor, orig­i­nally de­vel­oped for the LHCb ex­per­i­ment, has been adapted to the spe­cific con­di­tions of the clin­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment in a pro­ton ther­apy cen­tre. The semi­cir­cu­lar de­sign and po­si­tion of its sen­si­tive sil­i­con de­tec­tor of­fers a non-in­va­sive way to mea­sure the beam in­ten­sity with­out in­ter­fer­ing ..