Highlights
- •A Geant4 simulation was developed for three-dimensional proton micro-imaging.
- •Several phantoms are available, including a Caenorhabditis elegans.
- •3D mass density distribution was obtained from proton transmission microtomography.
- •Element content distribution was obtained from X-ray emission microtomography.
- •20 primary protons per shot is an optimal number for transmission microtomography.
Abstract
Proton imaging can be carried out on microscopic samples by focusing the beam to a
diameter ranging from a few micrometers down to a few tens of nanometers, depending
on the required beam intensity and spatial resolution. Three-dimensional (3D) imaging
by tomography is obtained from proton transmission (STIM: Scanning Transmission Ion
Microscopy) and/or X-ray emission (PIXE: Particle Induced X-ray Emission). In these
experiments, the samples are dehydrated for under vacuum analysis. In situ quantification
of nanoparticles has been carried out at CENBG in the frame of nanotoxicology studies,
on cells and small organisms used as biological models, especially on Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) nematodes. Tomography experiments reveal the distribution of mass density and chemical
content (in g.cm−3) within the analyzed volume. These density values are obtained using an inversion
algorithm. To investigate the effect of this data reduction process, we defined different
numerical phantoms, including a (dehydrated) C. elegans phantom whose geometry and density were derived from experimental data. A Monte Carlo
simulation based on the Geant4 toolkit was developed. Using different simulation and
reconstruction conditions, we compared the resulting tomographic images to the initial
numerical reference phantom. A study of the relative error between the reconstructed
and the reference images lead to the result that 20 protons per shot can be considered
as an optimal number for 3D STIM imaging. Preliminary results for PIXE tomography
are also presented, showing the interest of such numerical phantoms to produce reference
data for future studies on X-ray signal attenuation in thick samples.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 05, 2019
Accepted:
August 29,
2019
Received in revised form:
August 29,
2019
Received:
January 27,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
