PURPOSE In this article, we evaluate a plastic scintillation detector system for quality assurance in proton therapy using a BC-408 plastic scintillator, a commercial camera, and a computer. METHODS The basic characteristics of the system were assessed in a series of proton irradiations. The reproducibility and response to changes of dose, dose-rate, and proton energy were determined. Photogr...

Proton beam therapy is a new form of radiotherapy. Little is known about patients' experiences of proton beam therapy and less about parents' experiences of children receiving treatment. Semi-structured interviews explored 10 parents' experiences of travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States to have their children's brain tumours treated with proton beam therapy. Thematic analysis ...

Proton radiotherapy represents a potential major advance in cancer therapy. Most current proton beams are spread out to cover the tumor using passive scattering and collimation, resulting in an extra whole-body high-energy neutron dose, primarily from proton interactions with the final collimator. There is considerable uncertainty as to the carcinogenic potential of low doses of high-energy neu...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The scattered radiation from the treatment volume might be more significant for children than for adults and, as a consequence, modern radiotherapy treatment techniques such as IMRT and passive proton therapy could potentially increase the number of secondary cancers. In this report, secondary cancer risk resulting from new treatment technologies was estimated for an adul...

Introduction: Proton therapy is a type of radiation treatment that it uses protons to treat cancer. Because of the protons’ unique ability to distribute the radiation dose more directly to the tumor, it minimizes the damage to nearby healthy tissues. The rate of energy loss by the ion in the target is called stopping power. The total stopping power is sum nuclear and electroni...

This paper presents dose calculation in proton therapy using Monte Carlo method and comparison with experimental data obtained at TOHOKU University’s cyclotron and isotope center in Japan. In this way, two Monte Carlo codes, FLUKA and MCNPX, has been employed to calculate percentage depth dose, lateral dose profiles, isodose curves and secondary particles production for proton pencil and broad ...

There is increasing interest in using Cerenkov emissions for quality assurance and in vivo dosimetry in photon and electron therapy. Here, we investigate the production of Cerenkov light during proton therapy and its potential applications in proton therapy. A primary proton beam does not have sufficient energy to generate Cerenkov emissions directly, but we have demonstrated two mechanisms by ...

Determination of the Bragg peak position in proton therapy requires accurate knowledge of the electron density and ratio of effective atomic number and mass (Z/A) of the body tissues traversed. While the Z/A ratio is fairly constant for human tissues, the density of tissues varies significantly. One possibility to obtain accurate electron density information of tissues is to use protons of suff...