Possible improvement of proton energy filter for radiotherapy

摘要

For the majority of currently operating medical particle accelerators, dose delivery by one short pulse is not compatible with sequential irradiation of the target at different depths. To address this issue, an improvement of the energy modulator is presented based on a new design of the energy filter - a combined ridge filter. The use of such a device prevents maximum doses of irradiation from reaching healthy tissues outside of the tumor, which was a significant flaw of standard ridge filter. The combined energy filter may be used for a passive scattering of broad beams and, to some extent, for a pencil beam scanning. Monte-Carlo calculations have shown a high level of conformity of irradiation using the new energy filter.