Work

Characterization of a 144-channel front-end board for ion beam counting in particle therapy

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: A particle counter is being developed by the University and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics of Torino to be used as an online fluence beam monitor in Particle Therapy. The detector exploits thin planar silicon sensors (active thickness of ∼ 50 μ m) segmented in 146 strips with an area of 2 . 6 × 2 . 6 cm 2 to cover the cross section of a pencil beam. The readout electronics relies on a 24-channel ASIC (named ABACUS) optimized to discriminate the signal pulses in a wide charge range (4–150 fC). A front-end board was developed to house six ABACUS chips and was characterized in laboratory to measure pedestals, amplifier gains and noise. The results are compatible with the ABACUS design simulation and a full counting efficiency was found up to 143 MHz for regular pulses at the input of one channel. Moreover, discrimination thresholds were optimized to achieve a uniform channel-by-channel counting efficiency as required to guarantee clinical performance with proton and carbon ion beams.

Source: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment

DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2025.170712