Bragg peak

Clinical Practice

Beam (structure)

Engineering

Radiation treatment planning

Aerospace engineering

Particle therapy

Medical physics

Range (aeronautics)

Economics

Computer science

Radiation therapy

Radiology

Physics

Optics

Position (finance)

Physical therapy

Modalities

Sociology

Medicine

Finance

Social science

Medical Physics

Exploitation of the full potential offered by ion beams in clinical practice is still hampered by several sources of treatment uncertainties, particularly related to the limitations of our ability to locate the position of the Bragg peak in the tumor. To this end, several efforts are ongoing to improve the characterization of patient position, anatomy, and tissue stopping power properties prior to treatment as well as to enable in vivo verification of the actual dose delivery, or at least beam range, during or shortly after treatment. This contribution critically reviews methods under development or clinical testing for verification of ion therapy, based on pretreatment range and tissue probing as well as the detection of secondary emissions or physiological changes during and after treatment, trying to disentangle approaches of general applicability from those more specific to certain anatomical locations. Moreover, it discusses future directions, which could benefit from an integration of multiple modalities or address novel exploitation of the measurable signals for biologically adapted therapy.

<i>In vivo</i> range verification in particle therapy

In vivo range verification in particle therapy