Radiation Protection Studies for Radiobiology

Hadron therapy is a new treatment technique for cancer. Clinical studies [1] have demonstrated that hadron therapy is clinically more effective than conventional radiotherapy as it delivers the dose to the tumour, sparing the healthy tissue. Although this method reduces the additional dose delivered to the healthy tissues, due to the beam delivery systems the patients and the personnel are exposed to a secondary dose. Therefore, one of the main tasks for medical physicists is to make sure that the treatments are delivered according to the treatment plan.

This thesis is focused on the verification of the secondary dose received by the patient or the personnel during and after the irradiation sessions at three different facilities: the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, the Christie Proton Therapy Centre and OpenMed at CERN. The ambient dose equivalent calculations were studied using the FLUKA Monte Carlo code. These calculations investigate whether the shielding methods meet the existing radiation protection requirements and if the dose delivered to the patients or staff is kept As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) [38].