Development of a new ridge filter with honeycomb geometry for a pencil beam scanning system in particle radiotherapy

Abstract

A ridge filter (RGF), a beam energy modulation device, is usually used for particle radiotherapy with a pencil beam scanning system. The conventional RGF has a one-dimensional (1D) periodic laterally stepped structure in orthogonal plane with a central beam direction. The energy of a beam passing through the different thicknesses of the stepped RGF is modulated. Although the lateral pencil beam size is required to cover the several stepped RGF units to modulate its energy as designed, the current trend is to decrease lateral beam size to improve the scanning system. As a result, the beam size becomes smaller than the size of the individual RGF unit. The aim of this study was to develop a new RGF with two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb geometry to simultaneously achieve both a decrease in lateral beam size and the desired energy modulation.The conventional 1D-RGF and the 2D-RGF with honeycomb geometry were both designed so that the Bragg peak size of a 79MeV/u carbon ion pencil beam in water was 1mm RMS in the beam direction. To validate the design of the 2D-RGF, we calculated depth dose distributions in water using a simplified Monte Carlo method. In the calculations, we decreased the lateral pencil beam size at the entrance of the RGF and investigated the threshold of lateral beam size with which the pencil beam can reproduce the desired Bragg peak size for each type of RGF. In addition, we calculated lateral dose distributions in air downstream from the RGF and evaluated the inhomogeneity of the lateral dose distributions.Using the 2D-RGF, the threshold of lateral beam size with which the pencil beam can reproduce the desired Bragg peak size was smaller than that using the 1D-RGF. Moreover, the distance from the RGF at which the lateral dose distribution becomes uniform was shorter using the 2D-RGF than that using the 1D-RGF. These results indicate that when the periodic length of both RGFs is the same, the 2D-RGF allows use of a pencil beam with smaller lateral beam size and a shorter distance from the RGF to the target, resulting in improvement in the conformity of dose distribution in a tumor.