Three-dimensional dose distribution of proton beams derived from luminescence images of water

We recently found that luminescence was emitted from water during proton irradiation at lower energy than the Cerenkov-light threshold and imaging was possible by using a CCD camera. However, since the measured distributions were projection images of the luminescence, precise dose estimations from the images were not possible. If the 3 dimensional images can be formed from the projection images, more precise dose information could be obtained. For this purpose, we calculate the 3-dimensional distribution of the proton beams from the luminescence images and use them for beam width estimations. We assumed that the proton beams have circular shape and the transverse images were reconstructed from the projection images using the filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm for positron emission tomography (PET). The reconstructed images were compared to estimate the proton-beam widths with those obtained from the projection images and simulation results. We obtained 3-dimensional distributions of the proton beams from the projection images and also the reconstructed sagittal, coronal, and transverse images as well as volume rendering images. The estimated beam widths from the reconstructed images, which were slightly smaller than those obtained from the projection images, were identical to those calculated with the simulation. The 3-dimensional distributions of the luminescence images of water of proton beams could be reconstructed from the projection images and showed improved accuracy in estimating the beam widths of the proton beams.