TY  - JOUR
AU  - Shaikh, Saad
AU  - Escribano-Rodriguez, Sonia
AU  - Radogna, Raffaella
AU  - Kelleter, Laurent
AU  - Godden, Connor
AU  - Warren, Matthew
AU  - Attree, Derek
AU  - Saakyan, Ruben
AU  - Mortimer, Linda
AU  - Corlett, Peter
AU  - Warry, Alison
AU  - Gosling, Andrew
AU  - Baker, Colin
AU  - Poynter, Andrew
AU  - Kacperek, Andrzej
AU  - Jolly, Simon
TI  - Spread-out Bragg peak measurements using a compact quality assurance range calorimeter at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.
JO  - Physics in medicine and biology
VL  - 69
IS  - 11
SN  - 0031-9155
CY  - Bristol
PB  - IOP Publ.
M1  - DKFZ-2024-00865
SP  - 115015
PY  - 2024
AB  - The superior dose conformity provided by proton therapy relative to conventional X-ray radiotherapy necessitates more rigorous Quality Assurance (QA) procedures to ensure optimal patient safety. Practically however, time-constraints prevent comprehensive measurements to be made of the proton range in water: a key parameter in ensuring accurate treatment delivery.A novel scintillator-based device for fast, accurate water-equivalent proton range QA measurements for ocular proton therapy is presented. Experiments were conducted using a compact detector prototype, the Quality Assurance Range Calorimeter (QuARC), at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC) in Wirral, UK for the measurement of pristine and spread-out Bragg peaks (SOBPs). The QuARC uses a series of 14 optically-isolated 100 x 100 x 2.85 mm polystyrene scintillator sheets, read out by a series of photodiodes. The detector system is housed in a custom 3D-printed enclosure mounted directly to the nozzle and a numerical model was used to fit measured depth-light curves and correct for scintillator light quenching.Measurements of the pristine 60 MeV proton Bragg curve found the QuARC able to measure proton ranges accurate to 0.2 mm and reduced QA measurement times from several minutes down to a few seconds. A new framework of the quenching model was deployed to successfully fit depth-light curves of SOBPs with similar range accuracy.The speed, range accuracy and simplicity of the QuARC make the device a promising candidate for ocular proton range QA. Further work to investigate the performance of SOBP fitting at higher energies/greater depths is warranted.
KW  - plastic scintillator (Other)
KW  - proton therapy (Other)
KW  - quality assurance (Other)
KW  - spread out Bragg peak (Other)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:38657625
DO  - DOI:10.1088/1361-6560/ad42fd
UR  - https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/289786
ER  -