The design, construction, and preliminary testing of a second generation proton CT scanner is presented. All current treatment planning systems at proton therapy centers use X-ray CT as the primary imaging modality for treatment planning to calculate doses to tumor and healthy tissues. One of the limitations of X-ray CT is in the conversion of X-ray attenuation coefficients to relative (proton) stopping powers, or RSP. This results in more proton range uncertainty, larger target volumes and therefore, more dose to healthy tissues. To help improve this, we present a novel scanner capable of high dose rates, up to 2~MHz, and large area coverage, 20~x~24~cm2, for imaging an adult head phantom and reconstructing more accurate RSP values.
@article{arxiv.1409.0049,
title = {A New Proton CT Scanner},
author = {S. A. Uzunyan and G. Blazey and S. Boi and G. Coutrakon and A. Dyshkant and B. Erdelyi and D. Hedin and E. Johnson and J. Krider and V. Rykalin and V. Zutshi and R. Ford and G. Sellberg and J . E. Rauch and M. Roman and P. Rubinov and P. Wilson and M. Naimuddin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.0049},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
6 pages,10 figures; Presented at 23rd Conference on Application of Accelerators in Research and Industry (CAARI 2014), San Antonio, TX, May 25-30, 2014