A GEANT4 Study of a Gamma-ray Collimation Array

J. A.  Lopez; S. S.  Romero Gonzalez; O. Hernandez Rodriguez; J.  Holmes; R. Alarcon

doi:10.15415/jnp.2020.72028

Authors

J. A. Lopez Physics Department, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas, 79968 U.S.A.
S. S. Romero Gonzalez Physics Department, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas, 79968 U.S.A.
O. Hernandez Rodriguez Physics Department, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas, 79968 U.S.A.
J. Holmes Physics Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85281 U.S.A.
R. Alarcon Physics Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85281 U.S.A.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15415/jnp.2020.72028

Keywords:

Proton therapy, Collimators, Gamma rays, GEANT4

Abstract

Proton beam therapy uses high-energy protons to destroy cancer cells which are still uncertain about where in the body they hit. A possible way to answer this question is to detect the gamma rays produced during the irradiation and determine where in the body they are produced. This work investigates the use of collimators to determine where the proton interactions occur. GEANT4 is used to simulate the gamma production of a source interacting with a collimator. Each event simulates a number of gammas obtained as a function of the position along the detector. Repeating for different collimator configurations can thus help determine the best characteristics of a detector device.

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