Hadron Therapy (HT) is rapidly gaining importance for tumor treatments with about one hundred clinical centers operational worldwide. In HT, patients are treated with charged particles, as protons or carbon ions, which deposit their energy in the tissue in a much more localized region (the Bragg Peak – BP) than in conventional radiotherapy with electrons and photons. The intrinsically-localized irradiation capability would require a real-time monitoring of the BP, to verify the correspondence with the treatment plan and to avoid the irradiation of organs at risk.

The REALPATH – A Real-Time Range Verification System for Hadron Therapy, funded by the Italian Ministry for Universities and Research under the FISA (Italian Fund for Applied Sciences) call, will develop a real-time range verification system based on the measurement of prompt gamma rays, emitted almost instantaneously after the beam interaction with the patient’s tissues. Although research groups all over the world have explored different detection techniques, with proof-of-concept prototypes, clinical devices and procedures for routinely monitoring the range of therapeutic particle beams in the patient’s body are not yet available.

To achieve this goal, the project adopts an industrial-oriented approach to realize a complete prototype, from one side including the most advanced technical solutions for gamma-detection, but at the same time engineered and scaled appropriately to successfully demonstrate in a real clinical irradiation scenario the application of an online range verification technique.

In a first fundamental research phase, a detector based on merging multiple prompt-gammas detection techniques (imaging and spectroscopy) and on an active reduction of neutron background on the detector will be studied.

An extensive industrial research phase will cover the design and construction of a complete prototype, including a positioning system and adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to implement a fast ‘detect and react’ strategy.

Finally, in the experimental development phase the prototype will be validated in HT facilities.