Program Information
Effects of Cardiac Induced Brain Pulsations On Proton Minibeams
J Eagle1*, S Marsh1 , E Lee2 , J Meyer2 , (1) University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Canterbury, (2) University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Presentations
SU-F-T-673 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose: To quantify the dosimetric impact of internal motion within the brain on spatially modulated proton minibeam radiation therapy (pMRT) for small animal research.
Method and Materials: The peak-to-valley dose ratio (PVDR) is an essential dosimetric factor for pMRT. Motion of an animal brain caused by cardiac-induced pulsations (CIP) can impact dose deposition. For synchrotron generated high dose rate X-ray microbeams this effect is evaded due to the quasi-instantaneous delivery. By comparison, pMRT potentially suffers increased spread due to lower dose rates. However, for a given dose rate it is less susceptible to beam spread than microbeams, due to the spatial modulation being an order of magnitude larger.
Monte Carlo simulations in TOPAS were used to model the beam spread for a 50.5MeV pMRT beam. Motion effects were simulated for a 50mm thick brass collimator with 0.3mm slit width and 1.0mm center-to-center spacing in a water phantom. The maximum motion in a rat brain due to CIP has been reported to be 0.06mm. Motion was simulated with a peak amplitude in the range 0-0.2mm.
Results: The impact of 0.06mm peak motion was minimal and reduced the PVDR by about 1% at a depth of 10mm. For 0.2mm peak motion the PVDR was reduced by 16% at a depth of 10mm.
Conclusion: For the pMRT beam the magnitude of cardiac-induced brain motion has minimal impact on the PVDR for the investigated collimator geometry. For more narrow beams the effect is likely to be larger. This indicates that delivery of pMRT to small animal brains should not be affected considerably by beamlines with linac compatible dose rates.
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