Towards a proton imaging system

Hadron therapy for tumor treatment is nowadays used in several medical centres. The main advantage in using protons or light ions beams is the possibility of tightly shaping the radiation dose to the target volume. Presently the spatial accuracy of the therapy is limited by the uncertainty in stopping power distribution, which is derived, for each treatment, from the photon attenuation coefficients measured by X-ray tomography. A direct measurement of the stopping powers will help in reducing this uncertainty. This can be achieved by using a proton beam and a detection system able to reconstruct a tomography image of the patient. As a first step towards such a system an apparatus able to perform a proton transmission radiography (pCR) has been designed. It consists of a silicon microstrip tracker, measuring proton trajectories, and a YAG:Ce calorimeter to determine the particle residual energy. Proton beam and laboratory tests have been performed on the system components prototypes: the main results will be shown and discussed.