Acoustic Location of Bragg Peak for Hadrontherapy Monitoring

Resumen

Hadrontherapy makes it possible to deliver high doses of energy to cancerous tumors by using the large energy deposition in the Bragg-peak. However, uncertainties in the patient positioning and or in the anatomical parameters can cause distortions in the calculation of the dose distribution. In order to maximize the effectiveness of heavy particle treatments, an accurate monitoring system of the deposited dose depending on the energy, the beam time, and the spot size is necessary. The localized deposition of this energy leads to the generation of a thermoacoustic pulse that can be detected using acoustic technologies. This article presents different experimental and simulation studies of the acoustic localization of thermoacoustic pulses by generating similar signals that have been captured with a set of sensors around the samples. In addition, numerical simulations have been done where thermoacoustic pulses are emitted for the specific case of a proton beam of 100 MeV.