Radiographic film dosimetry suffers from its energy dependence in proton dosimetry. This study sought to develop a method of measuring proton beams by the film and to evaluate film response to proton beams for the constancy check of depth dose (DD). It also evaluated the film for profile measurements. To achieve this goal, from DDs measured by film and ion chamber (IC), calibration factors (rat...

BACKGROUND In radiation therapy, the principal dosimetric quantity of interest is the absorbed dose to water. Therefore, a dose conversion to dose to water is required for dose deposited by ion beams in other media. This is in particular necessary for dose measurements in plastic phantoms for increased positioning accuracy, graphite calorimetry being developed as a primary standard for dose to ...

The small fields and sharp gradients typically encountered in proton radiosurgery require high spatial resolution dosimetric measurements, especially below 1-2 cm diameters. Radiochromic film provides high resolution, but requires postprocessing and special handling. Promising alternatives are diode detectors with small sensitive volumes (SV) that are capable of high resolution and real-time do...

BACKGROUND In proton radiation therapy a constant relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of 1.1 is usually assumed. However, biological experiments have evidenced RBE dependencies on dose level, proton linear energy transfer (LET) and tissue type. This work compares the predictions of three of the main radio-biological models proposed in the literature by Carabe-Fernandez, Wedenberg, Scholz an...

Defence Standard 00-56 Issue 4 is the current contractual safety standard for UK MOD projects. It requires the production of a structured argument, supported by diverse evidence, to show that a system is safe for a defined purpose within a defined environment. This paper introduces a Standard of Best Practice which has been produced by the Software Systems Engineering Initiative to provide guid...

Fast nuclei are ionizing radiation which can cause deleterious effects to irradiated cells. The modelling of the interactions of such ions with matter and the related effects are very important to physics, radiobiology, medicine and space science and technology. A powerful method to study the interactions of ionizing radiation with biological systems was developed in the field of microdosimetry...

CATANA (Centro di AdroTerapia ed Applicazioni Nucleari Avanzate) was the first Italian protontherapy facility dedicated to treatment of ocular neoplastic pathologies. It is in operation at LNS Laboratories Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN-LNS) and date, 500 patients have been successfully treated. Even though proton therapy has demonstrated success clinical settings, there still a need more ...