Online beam monitoring in the treatment of ocular pathologies at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Sud-Catania

A detector (MOPI) has been developed for the online monitoring of the beam at the Centro di AdroTerapia e Applicazioni Nucleari Avanzate (CATANA), where shallow tumours of the ocular region are treated with 62 MeV protons. At CATANA the beam is passively spread to match the tumour shape. The uniformity of the delivered dose depends on beam geometrical quantities which are checked before each treatment. However, beam instabilities might develop during the irradiation affecting the dose distribution.This paper reports on the use of the MOPI detector to measure the stability of the beam profile during the irradiation in the clinical practice. The results obtained in the treatment of 54 patients are also presented.