Investigations on physical and biological range uncertainties in Krakow proton beam therapy centre

Abstract

Physical and biological range uncertainties limit the clinical potential of Proton Beam Therapy (PBT). In these proceedings, we report on two research projects, which we are conducting in parallel and which both tackle the problem of range uncertainties. One aims at developing software tools and the other at developing detector instrumentation. Regarding the first, we report on our development and pre-clinical application of a GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo (MC) simulation toolkit Fred. Concerning the letter, we report on our investigations of plastic-scintillator-based PET detectors for particle therapy delivery monitoring. We study the feasibility of Jagiellonian-PET detector technology for proton beam therapy range monitoring by means of MC simulations of the β+ activity induced in a phantom-by-proton beams and present preliminary results of PET image reconstruction. Using a GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Fred and plastic-scintillator-based PET detectors, we aim at improving the patient treatment quality with protons.