Background

The main goal of radiation therapy is to treat the tumor without causing significant damage to the surrounding normal tissues. The ion beam therapy provides higher potential for increased dose conformation to the target volume while sparing the healthy tissues. The verification of the treatment is crucial for the accurate dose delivery. This new device comprises a verification unit, particularly to be used for the patient treatment with the ion beam therapy. The device offers real-time beam tracking and several other advantages over the existing imaging technologies for verifying the dose delivery and the range of the ion beams. 

Technology Overview

The device is to monitor a patient treatment with ion-beam therapy comprises a delivery unit and a verification unit. The delivery unit is responsible for particle beam delivery to the patient in a particular direction. This comprises a rotatory gantry and a patient positioning platform, which are movable with respect to each other. The gantry has a movable side and a front wall located perpendicular to each other. The verification unit contains the detector elements that are responsible for verifying a range & dose delivery of the beam particles by determining the prompt- gamma radiation generated from the particle interactions within the patient body. This may also comprise a collimator unit for shaping the prompt gamma radiation and an evaluation unit for verifying the range ()

Stage of Development

All the necessary measurements for range accuracy have been successully done with surrogate phantoms. The device was mainly tested with proton, helium and carbon ion beams. The results with protons (Magalhaes Martins 2017) and helium ions (Dal Bello 2019) have been published and the results with carbon ions are in the progress of being published.

Benefits

This device comprises a detection system for verification of particle beams within the patient body, which is important for online verification of the range and dose delivery. This can be used for the non – isotropic emission of the prompt- gamma radiation occurring after the Bragg peak in beam direction when verifying the range and the dose delivery. It can be used for determining the elemental composition of an irradiated target. It can be used for tracking high atomic number materials within the beam path. It can also be used for the quality assurance and plan verification before treatment.

Applications

It measures the range and dose difference between the treatment plan and the data acquired during the actual treatment and is useful to avoid the treatment uncertainties and reduce safety margins. The deviations from the planned dose and range can be precisely detected and verified. This device allows online monitoring of the patient treatment with higher resolution

Opportunity

• Licensing
• Development partner