Heavy ion radiography and tomography

In the latest years, radiation therapy with ion beams has been rapidly spreading worldwide. This is mainly due to the favourable interaction properties of ion beams with matter, offering the possibility of more conformal dose deposition with superior sparing of healthy tissue in comparison to conventional photon radiation. Moreover, heavier ions like carbon offer a selective increase of biological effectiveness which can be advantageous for the treatment of tumours being resistant to sparsely ionizing radiation. However, full clinical exploitation of the advantages offered by ion beams is still challenged by the lack of exact knowledge of the beam range within the patient. Therefore, increasing research efforts are being devoted to the goal of reducing range uncertainties in ion beam therapy. In this context, ion transmission imaging is being recognized as a promising modality capable of providing valuable pre- (or even "in-between") treatment information on the patient-specific stopping properties for indirect in-vivo range verification and low dose image guidance at the treatment site. The more recent availability of energetic ion beam sources at therapeutic treatment facilities, in combination with the advances in detector technologies and computational power, have considerably renewed the interest in this imaging technique. Nowadays, many research efforts are being devoted to the development of novel detector prototypes for heavy ion radiography and tomography, as will be reviewed in this contribution. (C) 2014 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.