FULLBEAM

Fully digital in-beam PET for hadron therapy

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The accuracy of dose planning and delivery in hadron beam treatment is imperative, since millimeter errors can lead to over-dosage of critical organs or under-dosage of the tumor. Treatment plans can be reliable only if controlled with the use of in-beam positron emission tomography (ib-PET). Early experiments showed that the radiation produced by activated tissues represents a much richer and ephemeral scenario than in conventional PET imaging. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of the produced radiation can be acquired because of the high noise during particle extraction. It has been shown that modularized detectors can better sustain beam brightness, but new strategies are required in order to discriminate and recovery the useful signal. This project addresses the problem of in-spill blindness with a new concept photon discrimination technique based on fully digital acquisition. The idea is to upgrade the key sub-systems of the ib-PET system recently developed jointly by the Technical University of Madrid and the University of Pisa, being the two organizations respectively the origin and the destination of the candidate. A modified version of detector read-out modules will provide real-time photon digital characterization, while coincidence processing will be completely re-invented. The proposed photon characterization and tomographic reconstruction techniques will be mainly based on a series of results that have been co-published and co-patented in the last few years by the author of the project. This project is expected to intensify the researcher’s professional maturity as a medical imaging system engineer, giving him the opportunity to complete a competitive work started with his PhD studies. The close collaboration with the host group and their industrial partners will also give him the opportunity of training with next generation detector technologies and PET applications, thus preparing the ground for new advances in the state of the art.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Positron emission tomography (PET) is the most popular method for verifying that the dose delivered to patients undergoing proton therapy is correct. Now, EU-funded researchers have designed a dedicated PET system that promises to improve the precision of proton dose measurement.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

PET verification of proton therapy is based on several positron emitters generated in the irradiated region. These emitters include 11C,13N and15O and have half-lives that allow examination of the patient during and after irradiation with a PET scan. The resulting images can then be used to measure the delivered dose.

However, transferring the patient to a nearby PET scanner may result in isotope washout and inability to detect short-lived isotopes. In-beam systems overcome these downsides. An EU-funded team focused on the in-beam approach to proton monitoring with the aim of improving the acquisition speed and thus overcoming the problems related to washout and fast nuclear processes.

Within the framework of the FULLBEAM (Fully digital in-beam PET for hadron therapy) project, researchers developed an improved PET system comprised of two larger detector heads. Each 10x10 cm detector is coupled to photomultiplier tubes and equipped with independent data acquisition systems.

The main obstacle when recording PET data during treatment is the strong background noise. The FULLBEAM system, thanks to the low dead time of the detectors, mitigates the effects of random coincidence data, allowing acquisition of PET data during irradiation.

This is particularly advantageous because it would eliminate time-dependent image degradations, such as those due to biological washout. In addition, fully digital signal processing further reduces the deadtime of detectors and improves the coincidence resolution.

The data acquisition system developed within the FULLBEAM project is one of the technologies explored in the INSIDE project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, which uses wider detectors based on Silicon photomultipliers. The EU-funded TRIMAGE project has also benefited from the FULLBEAM technology. Combined with magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, project advance swill provide clinicians with an effective tool for the diagnosis of schizophrenia and other mental health disorders.