Measuring Proton Beam Parameters Using Boron-Enriched Plastic Scintillators

The presented work reports the results of measuring the spatial distribution of proton and secondary particle fluxes at the Prometheus proton therapy facility of the Physico-technical Center, Lebedev Physical Institute, and gives a comparison with simulation results obtained using the Geant4 software package. Measurements conducted with a water phantom, as well as with a compact neutron detector based on a boron-enriched scintillator developed at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, demonstrated good agreement between the observed neutron fluxes and the simulations. The simulation data suggest that the mechanism of enhanced biological effectiveness observed in several studies during proton irradiation with the use of boron-containing compounds is questionable, given the significantly lower contribution to the radiation dose from alpha particles compared to the dominant component caused by protons and other reaction products.