Ponente
Descripción
Hadron Therapy has advantages with respect to conventional radiotherapy because of the maximization of the dose at the Bragg peak. As a drawback, and because of different systematic uncertainty sources, a quasi-real time monitoring for ion-range verification is required to reduce safety margins and thus enhance its potential benefits. Two of the most promising methodologies for in-room real-time monitoring are positron-emission tomography (PET) and prompt-gamma imaging (PGI). The PGI technique is well suited for real-time monitoring due to the prompt-nature of the emitted radiation [Ler22], whereas PET imaging can provide tomographic and functional information relevant to study physiological processes and tumor response.
We have implemented a hybrid imaging monitoring based on the combination of both PGI and PET within the same system [Bal22], thus exploiting the advantages of both techniques. This is accomplished by means of an array of Compton cameras in a twofold front-to-front configuration operating in synchronous mode.
In this contribution I will present a summary of a proof-of-concept experiment performed at CNA-Sevilla and first results from the HIT-Heidelberg facility, where clinical conditions were used to validate the hybrid technique with protons, alpha and C ion beams.
[Ler22] J. Lerendegui-Marco et al., “Towards machine learning aided real-time range imaging in proton therapy”, Sci Rep 12, 2735 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06126-6
[Bal22] J. Balibrea-Correa et al., “Hybrid in-beam PET- and Compton prompt-gamma imaging aimed at enhanced proton-range verification”, The Eur. Phys. Jour. Plus, Volume 137, Issue 11, article id.1258 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03414-y
