ABSTRACT
The precision of heavy ion therapy makes it particularly useful for treating deeply situated tumors while minimising damage to adjacent healthy tissue. During heavy ion therapy, a fraction of the ions in the beam will undergo nuclear inelastic collisions. Fragmentation of nuclei in either the primary beam or the target results in the production of a range of stable and radioactive isotopes. The relative biological effectiveness of ion beams is very different to that of photon or electron radiation due to the specific energy deposition and electron track structure induced by the passage of energetic ions through matter. The impact of washout on positron emission tomography (PET) image quality can be mitigated by minimising the delay between irradiation and image acquisition, with in-beam PET the most effective method. The distribution of positron-emitting radionuclides within a phantom is different for RIBs and stable beams.
