Project R-8308

Microdosimetry of therapeutic proton beams (Research)

A novel microdosimeter optimized for the clinical environment will be constructed in collaboration with other laboratories. This new mini TEPC will be developed with the aim that it can be practically used in hospitals to characterize the radiation quality of proton beams. In this PhD proposal we propose to characterize this new mini TEPC in reference fields by performing measurements at the Laboratory for Nuclear calibrations of SCK-CEN. The main objective will be to perform in-field measurements with this new microdosimeter in clinical beams such as in the new research proton beam line in Leuven and/or other available facilities, such as LNS (Catania, Italy), GSI (Darmstadt, Germany) or CNAO (Pavia, Italy). In addition, calculations of proton microdosimetric spectra using Monte Carlo methods will be carried out to model the microdosimeter device and will be validated with experimental data. Monte Carlo codes such as MCNPX, FLUKA or GEANT4 can be used for this end. Out-of-field measurements are also very important in order to quantify the so-called peripheral absorbed doses, in particular originating from secondary neutrons. SCK-CEN has already experience in these kind of measurements for different radiotherapy techniques including proton fields. For this purpose, we will perform peripheral doses measurements with a standard TEPC (present at SCK-CEN).

01 October 2017 - 30 September 2021