Regensburg 2019 – scientific programme

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ST: Fachverband Strahlen- und Medizinphysik

ST 6: Radiation Therapy

ST 6.4: Talk

Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 15:45–16:00, H48

Studies of target reconstruction in proton therapy with prompt gamma energy-time templates — •Marius Walther, Arno Straessner, and Olga Novgorodova — Institut für Kern- und Teilchenphysik, TU Dresden

Proton therapy is one of the most promising technologies to treat cancer cells inside the human body. A major problem of this therapy are range uncertainties that lead to large safety margins for the treatment. Prompt gamma rays that are created from the interaction between the proton and the material are a good tool for range verification in real time and are currently researched.

To tackle the statistical problem that clinical environments encounter when using e.g. a pencil-beam scanning mode, an unfiltered energy- and time-resolved detection of all generated prompt gamma rays is proposed. This leads to the loss of the spatial information that comes from using a slit in front of the detector. However, the energy-time spectra allow a reconstruction of the local material composition and thus of the dose profile. Based on simulations, a template method is developed and tested on a reduced set of target materials. A first statistical benchmark will be presented in this talk.