Construction and tests of an in-beam PET-like demonstrator for hadrontherapy beam ballistic control

We present the first results obtained with a detector, called Large Area Pixelized Detector (LAPD), dedicated to the study the ballistic control of the beam delivered to the patient by in-beam and real time detection of secondary particles, emitted during its irradiation in the context of hadrontherapy. These particles are 511 keV γ from the annihilation of a positron issued from the β+ emitters induced in the patient tissues along the beam path. The LAPD basic concepts are similar to a conventional PET camera. The 511 keV γ are detected and the reconstructed lines of response allow to measure the β+ activity distribution. Nevertheless, when trying to use γ from positron annihilation for the ballistic control in hadrontherapy, the large prompt γ background should be taken into account and properly rejected. First reconstruction results, obtained with a phantom filled with a high intensity FDG source at the cancer research centre of Clermont-Ferrand are shown. We also report results of measurements performed at the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Centre with one third of the detector, using proton and carbon ion beams.