Fragmentation Measurements in Particle Therapy: status and plans of the FOOT experiment

Abstract

Due to the advantageous characteristics of the charged particle’s energy deposition in matter, protons or ion beams are used in hadrontherapy to treat deep-seated solid tumors. Using these beams, the maximum of the dose is released to the tumor tissues at the end of the beam range. In this process, nevertheless, fragmentation of both projectile and target nuclei can occur in the nuclear interactions of the beam with the patient tissues and, as showed in recent studies, needs to be carefully taken into account in the delivered dose calculation. Nuclear fragmentation is also extremely relevant for space radioprotection studies, when the exposition of sensors and human crews to solar and galactic particle flows have to be minimized. The goal of the FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment is to estimate target and beam fragmentation performing cross section measurements (with respect to the kinetic energy and direction) with a precision of the order of 5% in the energy range of interest for hadrontherapy (protons in the energy range of 70-230 MeV or ion beams with energy up to 400 MeV/u) and space radioprotection (ion beams with energy up to 800 MeV/u) in order to provide new data for medical physicists, radio-biologists and to improve not only the new generation of oncological Treatment Planning Systems but also the design of shielding elements for the future long duration space missions eventually with human crews. In this paper will be presented the project, the present status of the different detector sub-systems construction and the data-taking plans.