Ricerc@Sapienza

The correct quantification of the dose released in charged particle therapy treatments requires the knowledge of the double differential fragmentation cross section of particles composing both beam and target. The FOOT experiment aims at measuring these cross sections for ions of interest for charged particle therapy applications. The paper describes the performance of the TOF-Wall detector of the experiment. The detector is composed of two layers of 44 cm x 2 cm x 3 mm plastic scintillator bars (20 for each layer), arranged orthogonally and read out by silicon photomultipliers.

Nowadays there is a growing interest in particle therapy treatments exploiting
light ion beams against tumors due to their enhanced relative biological
effectiveness and high space selectivity. In particular promising results are
obtained by the use of 4He projectiles. Unlike the treatments performed
using protons, the beam ions can undergo a fragmentation process when
interacting with the atomic nuclei in the patient body. In this paper the results
of measurements performed at the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy center are