Proton range verification in homogeneous materials through acoustic measurements

Clinical proton beam quality assurance (QA) requires a simple and accurate method to measure the proton beam Bragg peak (BP) depth. Protoacoustics, the measurement of the pressure waves emitted by thermal expansion resulting from proton dose deposition, may be used to obtain the depth of the BP in a phantom by measuring the time-of-flight of the pressure wave. Rectangular and cylindrical phantoms of different materials (aluminum, lead, and polyethylene) were used for protoacoustic studies. Four different methods for analyzing the protoacoustic signals are compared. Data analysis shows that, for Methods 1 and 2, plastic phantoms have better accuracy than metallic ones because of the lower speed of sound. Method 3 does not require characterizing the speed of sound in the material, but it results in the largest error. Method 4 exhibits minimal error, less than 3 mm (with an uncertainty 1.5 mm) for all the materials and geometries. Psuedospectral wave-equation simulations (k-Wave MATLAB toolbox) are used to understand the origin of acoustic reflections within the phantom. The presented simulations and experiments show that protoacoustic measurements may provide a low cost and simple QA procedure for proton beam range verification as long as the proper phantoms and calculation methods are used.