Methods for reducing patient radiation exposure during proton therapy for eye disease

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to techniques for reduction of background radiation in the room for conducting proton eye radiotherapy. The necessity of this reduction stems from the health risk of low-dose effect on the personnel and patients. We have touched the aspects of background reduction both at the cost of secondary particles, produced in beam-forming systems, and the dose reduction for the patient's healthy tissue (when carrying out beam therapy) owing to correct assessment of the biological effects of protons with energies up to 60 MeV. The obtained calculation results prove that an increase in the proton beam diameter provides the possibility of reducing the background radiation by more than a factor of three in the room and of correspondingly decreasing the body's radiation exposure. It is necessary to take correct account of RBE to reduce the radiation exposure of adjacent organs.