In order to give the correct dose to a patient, the monitor chamber for a proton scanning system has to be calibrated. As recombination of ion pairs occurs in the monitor chamber, the relation between the number of particles traversing it per time unit and the ionization chamber signal is not linear. A method developed for a scanned pulsed proton beam taking the nonlinear monitor signal into account is described. A vital part of the reference dosimetry procedure is to determine the absorbed dose under reference conditions, which is recommended to be done with an ionization chamber. For a scanned pulsed proton beam, the recombination in the ionization chamber is not negligible and the signal from the ionization chamber has to be corrected. In this work, it is shown that although the pulse length is comparable to the ion transit time the beam can be considered as continuously scanned if the applied high voltage is not too small. Also shown is that the two-voltage formula for a continuous beam is under some conditions applicable for a continuous scanned beam as well.

A beam source model, i.e. a model for the initial phase space of the beam, for scanned proton beams has been developed. The beam source model is based on parameterized particle sources with characteristics found by fitting towards measured data per individual beam line. A specific aim for this beam source model is to make it applicable to the majority of the various proton beam systems currently available or under development, with the overall purpose to drive dose calculations in proton beam treatment planning. The proton beam phase space is characterized by an energy spectrum, radial and angular distributions and deflections for the non-modulated elementary pencil beam. The beam propagation through the scanning magnets is modelled by applying experimentally determined focal points for each scanning dimension. The radial and angular distribution parameters are deduced from measured two-dimensional fluence distributions of the elementary beam in air. The energy spectrum is extracted from a depth dose distribution for a fixed broad beam scan pattern measured in water. The impact of a multi-slab range shifter for energy modulation is calculated with an own Monte Carlo code taking multiple scattering, energy loss and straggling, non-elastic and elastic nuclear interactions in the slab assembly into account. Measurements for characterization and verification have been performed with the scanning proton beam system at The Svedberg Laboratory in Uppsala. Both in-air fluence patterns and dose points located in a water phantom were used. For verification, dose-in-water was calculated with the Monte Carlo code GEANT 3.21 instead of using a clinical dose engine with approximations of its own. For a set of four individual pencil beams, both with the full energy and range shifted, 96.5% (99.8%) of the tested dose points satisfied the 1%/1 mm (2%/2 mm) gamma criterion.

The ability of the Monte Carlo (MC) particle transport codes GEANT4.8.1 and GEANT4.8.2, FLUKA2006 and MCNPX2.4.0 to model proton transport at grazing incidence onto tungsten blocks has been tested and compared to experimental measurements. The test geometry consisted of a narrow proton beam of two energies, 98 MeV and 180 MeV, impinging on a thick tungsten alloy block at grazing incidence. The distribution of forward out-scatter from the tungsten alloy block was measured with a fluorescent screen viewed with a CCD camera via a mirror. In the MC simulations, the experimental setup was modelled and the dose deposited to the fluorescent screen material was scored. Simulations and measurements were made for four different incidence angles (3.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10 degrees ). Several different sets of calculations were performed, studying the impact of different user-defined settings in the different MC packages. The study of different parameters settings in the GEANT4.8.1 simulation showed a strong dependence of the calculated out-scatter probability on the maximum allowed step length. For the largest incidence angle an increase of 60% in the out-scatter probability was found when restricting the maximum allowed step length to 0.05 cm. We also observed that the stepping algorithm of GEANT4.8.1 and 4.8.2 introduces a small non-physical directional and positional asymmetry at the exit boundary of the tungsten alloy block. The shape of the energy spectrum of protons being out-scattered agreed between the codes. The dose-weighted forward out-scatter probability, i.e. the ratio between the total signal from the unscattered beam and the out-scattered beam, showed a qualitative agreement of simulations compared to measurements. Quantitatively, the deviation of the simulations reached as high as 37%, while the experimental uncertainty was 14%. The mean emission angle of the simulations was within 16% of the measurement for all incidence angles with a measurement uncertainty of 8%.

Collimators are routinely used in proton radiotherapy to laterally confine the field and improve the penumbra. Collimator scatter contributes up to 15% of the local dose and is therefore important to include in treatment planning dose calculation. We present a method for reconstruction of the collimator scatter phase space based on the parametrization of pre-calculated scatter kernels. Collimator scatter distributions, generated by the Monte Carlo (MC) package GEANT4.8.2, were scored differential in direction and energy. The distributions were then parametrized so as to enable a fast reconstruction by sampling. MC calculated dose distributions in water based on the parametrized phase space were compared to full MC simulations that included the collimator in the simulation geometry, as well as to experimental data. The experiments were performed at the scanned proton beam line at the The Svedberg Laboratory (TSL) in Uppsala, Sweden. Dose calculations using the parametrization of this work and the full MC for isolated typical cases of collimator scatter were compared by means of the gamma index. The result showed that in total 96.7% (99.3%) of the voxels fulfilled the gamma 2.0%/2.0 mm (3.0%/3.0 mm) criterion. The dose distribution for a collimated field was calculated based on the phase space created by the collimator scatter model incorporated into the generation of the phase space of a scanned proton beam. Comparing these dose distributions to full MC simulations, including particle transport in the MLC, yielded that in total for 18 different collimated fields, 99.1% of the voxels satisfied the gamma 1.0%/1.0 mm criterion and no voxel exceeded the gamma 2.6%/2.6 mm criterion. The dose contribution of collimator scatter along the central axis as predicted by the model showed good agreement with experimental data.

In this paper we present the recent developments made for the scanning system for proton beams at TSL in Uppsala, showing that this system is now fully functional being able to produce conformal intensity modulated scan patterns with sufficient accuracy. A new control and supervising system handling the beam delivery including the control of the synchrocyclotron and the scanning system is developed and described in detail. A complete dosimetry system with transmission ionization chambers and a multi-wire ionization chamber for monitoring of the beam during scanning has been constructed. The details of the dose monitors and the position sensitive multi-wire ionization chamber are presented in this work. Furthermore, we have established procedures for verification measurements to ensure the quality of the beam and also methods for calibration of the beam monitors and relative and absolute dosimetry for complex scanned beams.