Proton Sound Detector for beam range/dose measurement in FLASH hadron therapy

Proton Sound Detectors (ProSDs) sense (at low latency, <1ms) the thermoacoustic signal generated by the fast energy deposition at the Bragg peak of a proton beam penetrating an energy absorber. ProSDs are especially promising for experimental monitoring of high pulse rate (FLASH) hadron therapy treatments working in-sync with the beam. This paper presents a mixed signal detector, capable of sensing and processing high rate (1k beam shots/sec) ionacoustic signals with low latency (< 1ms). The system was validated by measuring the dose deposition of a 20MeV proton beam in water, achieving 3.43% precision (+/- 2.75 Gy(RMS)) after 50 ms acquisition (77.56 Gy total dose deposition).

Automated summary

This paper presents a mixed signal detector, ProSDs, capable of sensing and processing ionacoustic signals at high pulse rates, which shows promising potential for experimental monitoring of high pulse rate hadron therapy treatments.