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ST: Fachverband Strahlen- und Medizinphysik
ST 1: Radiation Therapy & Dosimetry
ST 1.2: Talk
Monday, March 24, 2014, 17:00–17:15, RW 2
Single track spectroscopy using Al203:C, Mg-based fluorescent nuclear track detectors for ion-beam radiotherapy — Nicolas Schudell1,2, Felix Bestvater3, •Oliver Jäkel1, Volker Schünemann2, and Steffen Greilich1 — 1Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany — 2Fachbereich Physik, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany — 3Light Microscopy Facility, DKFZ, Heidelberg, Germany
Novel Fluorescent Nuclear Track Detectors (FNTDs), based on biocompatible alumina single crystals, have excellent detection efficiency for ions with linear energy transfer (LET) greater than 0.5 keV/μm. This enables detecting individual primary particles and fragments present in therapeutical ion beams. By color center transformation, track information is stored permanently in the detector, and can be read out using a confocal laser scanning confocal microscope (CLSM). The method can be applied to a series of research topics in the ion-beam therapy of solid tumors. A major desideratum thereby is the in-vivo assessment of radiation fields in terms of energy and nuclear charge of single ions. This information can, in principle, be gained from FNTDs by quantitative measurements of individual ion track fluorescent intensity. To achieve this goal, we established a workflow to correct for laser power instability, lateral illumination inhomogeneity and laser coupling into the FNTD for the CLSM used. We present the performance of our approach on spectroscopic data as well as the FNTD method and its technical challenges in a life-science environment.