Ricerc@Sapienza

The MOnitor for Neutron Dose in hadrOntherapy (MONDO) project addresses the technical challenges posed by a neutron tracker detector aiming for a high detection efficiency and a good backtracking precision. The project aims to develop a tracking device capable of fully reconstructing the four momen- tum of fast and ultrafast secondary neutrons produced, e.g., in particle therapy (PT) treatments or in other physical processes.

Charged particle therapy is a technique for cancer treatment that exploits hadron beams, mostly protons
and carbon ions. A critical issue is the monitoring of the beam range so to check the correct dose deposition
to the tumor and surrounding tissues. The design of a new tracking device for beam range real-time
monitoring in pencil beam carbon ion therapy is presented. The proposed device tracks secondary
charged particles produced by beam interactions in the patient tissue and exploits the correlation of

Hadron radiotherapy is a powerful technique for the treatment of deep-seated tumours. The physical dose distribution of hadron beams is characterized by a small dose delivered in the entrance channel and a large dose in the Bragg peak area. Fragmentation of the incident particles and struck nuclei occurs along the hadron path. Knowledge of the fragment energies and angular distributions is crucial for the validation of the models used in treatment planning systems.