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Department Proton Therapy

Scientific projects

We work on the development of our accelerators, beam delivery, and dosimetry.

Accelerator Research and Development

On one hand, the accelerator complex has to provide protons for therapy with utmost reliability.

On the other hand, we continously develop the accelerators. Examples are:

  • determination of the time structure
  • particle beams with the same charge/mass ratio, so-called cocktail-beams
  • development of new scattering systems for experiments

lateral dose distribution FLASH - enlarged view

Lateral dose distribution for an irradiation field with 6 mm diameter, for conventional irradation (slashed line) and FLASH irradiation (red line)

FLASH Therapy

The so-called FLASH therapy means high doses in a very short time. The hope is for less side effects while maintaining the local tumour control.

The accelerators have to provide high beam intensities, the dose rate shoul be at least 40Gy/s.  Beam delivery and dosimetry have to be adapted to the desired short times.

For research purpose 15 Gy have been delivered in 0.2 s while achieving a good lateral dose distribution.


FLASH chamber vs. Adv. Markus chamber - enlarged view

Comparison of the HZB-FLASH-Chamber with the Advanced Markus Chamber (PTW)

Dosimetry and Detector Development

Transmission ionisation chambers with an excellent linearity over a vast range of dose rate are needed for the above mentioned FLASH-irradiations. HZB has developed such a chamber, which exhibits the same response to the particle beam as an Advanced Markus Chamber for dosimetry from PTW (S. Gerke, "Entwicklung einer Dosismonitorkammer für Flash-Bestrahungen mit Protonen", master thesis, Beuth-Hochschule für Technik, 2021).