Imaging with Ion Beams at MedAustron

Abstract

MedAustron is an Austrian cancer treatment facility using protons in the energy range from 62.4MeV to 252.7MeV and carbon ions with energies up to 400MeV/u for external beam radiotherapy. The facility features a unique beam line exclusively for non-clinical research, which will be commissioned for even higher proton energies of up to 800MeV.A demonstrator of a proton computed tomography system consisting of a tracking telescope and a residual energy detector is being developed and will be tested in beam at MedAustron. Currently, this demonstrator consists of a beam telescope composed of four double-sided silicon-strip detectors. A rotating table serving as sample holder is placed between the second and third detector. The tracking telescope is triggered by two scintillation detectors operated in coincidence and is placed downstream behind the silicon detectors. This telescope was tested in beam to obtain a radiography of an aluminium sample. Additionally, the tracking telescope was modelled in Geant4 to simulate particle tracks.An image reconstruction method exploiting material dependent variations of the scattering angle of protons was used to obtain a three dimensional image of an irradiated sample.