Ricerc@Sapienza

Ion beam therapy is a rapidly growing technique for tumor radiation therapy. Ions allow for a high dose deposition in the tumor region, while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. For this reason, the highest possible accuracy in the calculation of dose and its spatial distribution is required in treatment planning. On one hand, commonly used treatment planning software solutions adopt a simplified beam–body interaction model by remapping pre-calculated dose distributions into a 3D water-equivalent representation of the patient morphology.

Tumour control is performed in particle therapy using particles and ions, whose high irradiation precision enhances the effectiveness of the treatment, while sparing the healthy tissue surrounding the target volume.
Dose range monitoring devices using photons and charged particles produced by the beam interacting with the patient’s body have already been proposed, but no attempt has been made yet to exploit the detection of the abundant neutron component.