ArticleFrontiers in oncology2022
Collimating individual beamlets in pencil beam scanning proton therapy, a dosimetric investigation.
Article in Frontiers in oncology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Use of apertures in single-energy pristine Bragg peak FLASH radiotherapy.Journal of applied clinical medical physics · 2026Article
- Towards ultra-fast treatments: large energy acceptance beam delivery systems and opportunities for proton beam therapy.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Review
- Modelling small block aperture in an in-house developed GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo-based dose engine for pencil beam scanning proton therapy.Physics in medicine and biology · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The purpose of this work is to investigate collimating individual proton beamlets from a dosimetric perspective and to introduce a new device concept, the spot scanning aperture (SSA). The SSA consists of a thin aperture with a small cylindrical opening attached to a robotics system, which allows the aperture to follow and align with individual beamlets during spot delivery. Additionally, a range shifter is incorporated (source-side) for treating shallow depths. Since the SSA trims beamlets spot by spot, the patient-facing portion of the device only needs to be large enough to trim a single proton beamlet. The SSA has been modelled in an open-source Monte-Carlo-based dose engine (MCsquare) to characterize its dosimetric properties in water at depths between 0 and 10 cm while varying the following parameters: the aperture material, thickness, distance to the water phantom, distance between the aperture and attached range shifter, and the aperture opening radius. Overall, the SSA greatly reduced spot sizes for all the aperture opening radii that were tested (1 - 4 mm), especially in comparison with the extended range shifter (ranger shifter placed at 30 cm from patient); greater than 50% when placed less than 10 cm away from the patient at depths in water less than 50 mm. The peak to entrance dose ratio and linear energy transfer was found to depend on the thickness of the aperture and therefore the aperture material. Neutron production rates were also investigated and discussed.
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Registered trials
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