Ponente
Descripción
Research at the Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (i3M, Valencia) is related to the development of diagnostic systems and clinical or preclinical applications of nuclear physics techniques. We present two recent advances related to particle therapy. The necessity for online range measurement for the real-time determination of the position of the Bragg peak has been much discussed throughout the last decade. We have developed a beam trigger detector based on scintillating fibers which can be used for precise coincidence timing at clinical beam intensities and thereby allows for background suppression in prompt-gamma detection and spectroscopy. Tests with an upgrade version are ongoing.
The second research topic relies on proton and ion acceleration with ultra-short laser pulses. This type of radiation sources generate ultra-intense particle bunches and have attracted much attention as a tool for investigating radiobiological effects in the ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) regime. In close collaboration with IGFAE (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) we have performed the first experiments on cell culture irradiation with laser-produced x-rays and protons in Spain. First measurements were realized at the Laser Laboratory for Acceleration and medical Applications (L2A2, Santiago de Compostela) using a stabilized x-ray source at the 1 mJ/1 kHz laser line. A dedicated campaign with laser-accelerated protons was recently completed at the Spanish Pulsed Laser Centre (CLPU, Salamanca). Cell samples were prepared and analyzed by the Fundación Pública Galega de Medicina Xenómica (FPGMX, Santiago de Compostela) and by Instituto de Biología Funcional y Genómica (IBFG, Salamanca). Our aim is to perform systematic studies of the cellular response to damage caused by different types of ionizing radiation (protons, x-rays) and their comparison to clinical radiation fields.
