Highlights
- •Design of a radiobiology facility based on a laser-driven ion beam source.
- •Geant4 based simulation tool (BDSIM) verified the beam optics design.
- •BDSIM determined the energy deposition profile in the end station.
- •Simulations confirmed 15 MeV as optimal beam energy.
Abstract
The Centre for the Clinical Application of Particles’ Laser-hybrid Accelerator for
Radiobiological Applications (LhARA) facility is being studied and requires simulation
of novel accelerator components (such as the Gabor lens capture system), detector
simulation and simulation of the ion beam interaction with cells. The first stage
of LhARA will provide protons up to 15 MeV for in vitro studies. The second stage
of LhARA will use a fixed-field accelerator to increase the energy of the particles
to allow in vivo studies with protons and in vitro studies with heavier ions.
BDSIM, a Geant4 based accelerator simulation tool, has been used to perform particle
tracking simulations to verify the beam optics design done by BeamOptics and these
show good agreement. Design parameters were defined based on an EPOCH simulation of
the laser source and a series of mono-energetic input beams were generated from this
by BDSIM. The tracking results show the large angular spread of the input beam (0.2 rad)
can be transported with a transmission of almost 100% whilst keeping divergence at
the end station very low (<0.1 mrad). The legacy of LhARA will be the demonstration
of technologies that could drive a step-change in the provision of proton and light
ion therapy (i.e. a laser source coupled to a Gabor lens capture and a fixed-field
accelerator), and a system capable of delivering a comprehensive set of experimental
data that can be used to enhance the clinical application of proton and light ion
therapy.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 10, 2019
Accepted:
July 7,
2019
Received in revised form:
July 5,
2019
Received:
December 31,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
