Mimicking Large Spot-scanning Radiation Fields for Proton FLASH Preclinical Studies with a Robotic Motion Platform

Overview

Journal ArXiv

Date 2024 Sep 24

PMID 39314510

Authors

Fada Guan

Dadi Jiang

Xiaochun Wang

Ming Yang

Kiminori Iga

Yuting Li

Lawrence Bronk

Julianna Bronk

Liang Wang

Youming Guo

Narayan Sahoo

David R Grosshans

Albert C Koong

Xiaorong R Zhu

Radhe Mohan

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Previously, a synchrotron-based horizontal proton beamline (87.2 MeV) was successfully commissioned to deliver radiation doses in FLASH and conventional dose rate modes to small fields and volumes. In this study, we developed a strategy to increase the effective radiation field size using a custom robotic motion platform to automatically shift the positions of biological samples. The beam was first broadened with a thin tungsten scatterer and shaped by customized brass collimators for irradiating cell/organoid cultures in 96-well plates (a 7-mm-diameter circle) or for irradiating mice (1-cm square). Motion patterns of the robotic platform were written in G-code, with 9-mm spot spacing used for the 96-well plates and 10.6-mm spacing for the mice. The accuracy of target positioning was verified with a self-leveling laser system. The dose delivered in the experimental conditions was validated with EBT-XD film attached to the 96-well plate or the back of the mouse. Our film-measured dose profiles matched Monte Carlo calculations well (1D gamma pass rate >95%). The FLASH dose rates were 113.7 Gy/s for cell/organoid irradiation and 191.3 Gy/s for mouse irradiation. These promising results indicate that this robotic platform can be used to effectively increase the field size for preclinical experiments with proton FLASH.

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