Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme

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ST: Fachverband Strahlen- und Medizinphysik

ST 2: Detector Physics

ST 2.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 17:15–17:30, Phys-HS P

A x-ray pinhole camera based on Timepix3 — •Michael Thiel¹, Gisela Anton¹, Christoph Bert², Thilo Michel¹, Jürgen Hößl¹, Karoline Kallis², Patrick Hufschmidt¹, and Sebastian Schmidt¹ — ¹Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics (ECAP), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erwin-Rommel-Str. 1, 91058 Erlangen — ²Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Strahlenklinik, Medizinische Strahlenphysik, Universitätsstr.27, 91054 Erlangen

In this contribution we present results of first measurements with a Timepix3 detector positioned behind a pinhole in order to image radioactive sources for example to control brachytherapy treatments.

Interstitial brachytherapy of breast cancer requires catheters implanted into the breast. In these catheters a radioactive source is inserted and moved to certain dwell positions for an optimized dwell time in order to irradiate the tumor bed. The Timepix3 detector is a time-, energy- and position resolving active pixel detector. The pixel matrix consists of 256 x 256 square pixel with 55 micrometer pixel pitch. In contrast to the previous version of the Timepix detector, the Timepix3 does not work in camera mode but transfers the deposited energy (as time-over-threshold) and a timestamp to the readout almost instantaneously after a pixel has been triggered. The dead time is reduced to negligible amounts for the count rates expected in HDR-brachytherapy. During HDR-brachytherapy, an image of the radioactive source can be obtained with a pinhole placed in front of the Timepix3 detector.