3D Proton Bragg Peak Visualization and Spot Shape Measurement with Polymer Gel Dosimeters

Abstract

Proton pencil beam scanning is a dynamic beam delivery technique with excellent conformability to the tumor volume. The accuracy of spot size and scanning positions will have a significant effect on the delivered dose distribution. We employed polymer gel dosimeters to measure the spot size and the scanning positions for the Shanghai Advanced Proton Therapy facility (SAPT). Polymer gel dosimeters (MAGAT-f and PAGAT) were utilized to measure the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the beam spot at various depths on the basis of their MRI readouts. The correlation between the spot FWHM and standard deviation (σ) was analyzed at different depths. The measured Bragg peak range was compared with the Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. Three-dimensional volume rendering of the Bragg peak was reconstructed for the 3D visualization to measure the spot size three-dimensionally. The R2 dose–response curve was investigated with polymer gel dosimeters. The deviations of the Bragg peak ranging between measurement and simulation were 0.13% and −0.53% for MAGAT-f and PAGAT, respectively. Our results ascertain the feasibility of a polymer gel dosimeter to measure the spot size and positions of a proton pencil beam.