Development of a multi-purpose proton microbeam system: irradiation of tumor cells by energetic protons at the Bragg peak

Abstract

Employing ionization radiation to serve our communities has various applications in agricultural, industrial, and medical fields. The application of physics to medicine deals mainly with ionizing radiation in diagnosis and treating human therapeutic. Radiation treatment is a commonly utilized treatment for a variety of cancers in humans. The aim of utilizing radiation is to destroy tumor cells while reducing damage to healthy cells, and new techniques that can achieve that purpose are continuously being developed. A charged particle microbeam is a specialized opportunity to precisely control the number of particles crossing the individual cells and the dose location within the cell. The design and construction of the collimation and detection system significantly impact the target accuracy. At East Carolina University, a horizontal multi-purpose microbeam and broad-beam system have been developed with a single electrostatic quadrupole quadruplet focusing lens. It has been combined with the 2 MV tandem Pelletron accelerator to generate a micrometer-sized beam and broad-sized beam for cell irradiation research. This system will have the capability to be used as the primary beam for a microPIXE (particle-induced x-ray emission) and neutron microbeam experimental system. In this study, an electrostatic quadruplet lens and a 10 [mu]m Havar exit window were used to generate a proton microbeam, measured using the knife-edge technique. A 3 MeV proton beam was used to irradiate MCF 7 cancer cells at 0.5 and 1 Gy doses. In conjunction with these doses, the survival curve was calculated using the PrestoBlue assay.