Feasibility Study of Applying Proton Radiography (Prg) in Adaptive Proton Radiotherapy

Proton therapy is a fast evolving treatment technique in recent years. In Taiwan, the first proton therapy facility of the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH) became operational and started routine clinical service in the end of 2015. The advantage of proton therapy lies in its fixed penetration range (Bragg peak) and can in theory deliver high dose to tumors and spare nearby critical normal structures. This advantageous character is however compromised due to range uncertainty. To solve this problem, various range verification techniques were proposed. Among them, proton radiography (pRG) used to monitor daily patient water equivalent pathlength (WEPL) variation starts to draw much attention in recent years. According to recent published reports, pRG can be a convenient, time-saving and low dose tool to potentially become a daily WEPL quality assurance device. This grant application thus proposes to utilize two software modules (PTSim and DRM) previously developed by our team to perform feasibility study of applying pRG in adaptive proton radiotherapy. The PTSim Monte Carlo simulation module has full capacity of simulating all proton beam characteristics of the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital proton facility. The DRM technique (discrete range modulation) can suppress image noise of proton radiography for up to four orders.

Project ID:PC10708-0892
External Project ID:MOST107-2314-B182-024