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. 2025 Feb:130:104883.
doi: 10.1016/j.ejmp.2024.104883. Epub 2025 Jan 7.

Characterisation of the HollandPTC R&D proton beamline for physics and radiobiology studies

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Characterisation of the HollandPTC R&D proton beamline for physics and radiobiology studies

M Rovituso et al. Phys Med. 2025 Feb.

Abstract

HollandPTC is an independent outpatient center for proton therapy, scientific research, and education. Patients with different types of cancer are treated with Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy (IMPT). Additionally, the HollandPTC R&D consortium conducts scientific research into the added value and improvements of proton therapy. To this end, HollandPTC created clinical and pre-clinical research facilities including a versatile R&D proton beamline for various types of biologically and technologically oriented research. In this work, we present the characterization of the R&D proton beamline of HollandPTC. Its pencil beam mimics the one used for clinical IMPT, with energy ranging from 70 up to 240 MeV, which has been characterized in terms of shape, size, and intensity. For experiments that need a uniform field in depth and lateral directions, a dual ring passive scattering system has been designed, built, and characterized. With this system, field sizes between 2 × 2 cm2 and 20 × 20 cm2 with 98 % uniformity are produced with dose rates ranging from 0.5 Gy/min up to 9 Gy/min. The unique and customized support of the dual ring system allows switching between a pencil beam and a large field in a very simple and fast way, making the HollandPTC R&D proton beam able to support a wide range of different applications.

Keywords: Experimental characterization; Proton beam line; Proton radiobiology; R&D.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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