A New method for monitoring beam range by measuring low energy photons

低エネルギー光子測定によるビーム飛程モニタリングのための新たな方法

山口 充孝; 鳥飼 幸太*; 河地 有木; 島田 博文*; 佐藤 隆博; 長尾 悠人; 藤巻 秀; 国分 紀秀*; 渡辺 伸*; 高橋 忠幸*; 荒川 和夫*; 神谷 富裕; 中野 隆史*

Yamaguchi, Mitsutaka; Torikai, Kota*; Kawachi, Naoki; Shimada, Hirofumi*; Sato, Takahiro; Nagao, Yuto; Fujimaki, Shu; Kokubun, Motohide*; Watanabe, Shin*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Arakawa, Kazuo*; Kamiya, Tomihiro; Nakano, Takashi*

We studied a new method to monitor a beam range in heavy-ion radiation therapy on the basis of measurement of low energy photons emitted from a track of the ion beam. A 290 MeV/u carbon beam was injected into a cylindrical water phantom. A CdTe semiconductor detector with a lead slit having a width of 2 mm was placed at a side of the phantom. In order to measure the position dependence of the low energy photon count, the beam range was varied by changing the energy of injected ions using a binary energy degrader placed about 100 cm upstream of the beam focal point. The measured photon count decreased when the detector got closer to the end point of the beam range and the derivative of the photon count values sharply changed within a depth variation of a few mm in front of the range position. This was explained by our theoretical study assuming secondary electron bremsstrahlung. These results indicate that this new method could be useful to estimate the range position from the observation of bremsstrahlung with an accuracy of a few mm.