LABORATORI NAZIONALI DI LEGNARO
In view of the increasing importance of radiation therapy using hadrons, it is the aim of the lecture to describe the ability of detector systems based on nanoparticles or quantum dots to measure nanodosimetric quantities which behave as a function of linear energy transfer (LET) similarly to the yields of double-strand breaks in plasmid DNA. These nanodosimetric quantities represent particular properties of particle tack structure on a nanometre scale and may be useful in the future for the assessment and monitoring of radiation quality. The considered detector systems consist of specified numbers of single nanometre-sized spherical detectors which are randomly distributed in a cylindrical target layer. The nanodosimetric properties of the detector systems have been studied by Monte Carlo simulation assuming that they are homogenously irradiated by protons and heavier ions at specific energies between about 0.5 MeV/u and 500 MeV/u. The analysis of the Monte Carlo data shows that detector systems consisting of detector spheres, 3 nm in diameter, behave in the right way if the detector density is appropriately chosen. In view of these results, the development of detector systems based on nanoparticles or quantum dots to characterize radiation quality seems to be feasible.

DATA: 09-12-2015