Dose calculations reveal how patient motion impacts proton minibeam therapy

Physics World reports that a team at Institut Curie has created a four‑dimensional Monte Carlo tool to evaluate how patient motion impacts proton minibeam radiotherapy, a cutting‑edge cancer treatment that uses arrays of ultra‑narrow proton beams to spare healthy tissue. Their calculations show that typical breathing motion can halve the peak‑to‑valley dose ratio in the thorax—from about twelve down to six point seven—and cut the dose covering ninety‑five percent of the tumor by roughly thirty percent. In brain cases, even a one‑millimetre shift lowers the peak‑to‑valley ratio by ten percent, with a two‑millimetre shift causing a twenty‑four percent drop, though the overall target dose stays stable. The researchers say the workflow will help assess motion‑related interplay effects and guide future work on faster delivery methods such as high‑dose‑rate or FLASH techniques.

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