A Prototype Scintillating Fibre Beam Profile Monitor for Ion Therapy Beams

Abstract

A prototype plastic scintillating fibre based beam profile monitor was tested at the Heidelberg Ion Therapy Centre / \textit{Heidelberg Ionenstrahl Therapiezentrum} (HIT) in 2016 to determine its beam property reconstruction performance and the feasibility of further developing an expanded system. At HIT protons, helium, carbon, and oxygen ions are available for therapy and experiments. The beam can be scanned in two dimensions using fast deflection magnets. A tracking system is used to monitor beam position and to adjust scanner currents online. A new detector system with a finer granularity and without the drift time delay of the current MWPC system with a similar amount of material along the beamline would prove valuable in patient treatment. The sensitive detector components in the tested prototype detector are double-clad Kuraray SCSF-78MJ scintillating fibres with a diameter of 0.250~mm wound as a thin multi-layer ribbon. The scintillation light is detected at the end of the ribbon with Hamamatsu S11865-64 photodiode arrays with a pitch of 0.8~mm. The results shown in this paper include the linearity with respect to beam intensity, the RMS of the beam intensity as measured by two planes, along with the RMS of the mean position, and the measured beam width RMS. The Signal-to-Noise ratio of the current system is also measured as an indicator of potential performance. Additionally, the non-linear light yield of the scintillating fibres as measured by the photodiode arrays is compared to two models which describe the light yield as a function of the ion stopping power and Lorentz $\beta$.