Activities 2013Q1

Training

07/02/2013: Protection of own working safety and safety of the colleagues.

20/02/2013: Radioprotection lessons and German Normative.

27/02/2013: The training has been lead by A.Giuliacci (IBA Dosimetry). The training included some teorithical lessons including the most important definitions in radiotherapic devces as: Isocenter, SSD (Source-Surface Distance), SDD (Source-Detector Distance). Moreover the lessons went through the structure of a LINAC accelerator and different ionization chamber used in the quality control of the accelarator. In the second part of the training we performed some measurements about beam profile and PDD (Percentage Depth Dose).

Experimental activities

Date: February 2013

Preliminary Studies: Threshold Equalization of the detector, Analog Test- Pulse Calibration. Electronics of the chip, DAC structure. Working Mode of the detector (Counting Mode, Dosi Mode, Integration Mode)

Date: March 2013

Measurements at Mammo device (IBA Dosimetry): Acquisition of bremsstrahlung Spectra at different Energies.

Activities 2013Q2

Training

12/04/2013: Company training about Quality Manager

22/05/2013: This training has given complementary information to the Relative Dosimetry attended in the first quartile (February 2013, lead by A.Giuliacci). The aim of this second part was the understanding of calibration procedure at Linac device. The trainig went through the definition of dose and the theoretical explanation of the cavity theory, to end with the protocols that are used in Germany and in the European Union, which regulate the calibration procedure of the clinical devices. The explanation of these protocols was really usefull for me, because they also are a baseline to understand and acquire a method of working in th eplanning of my research activity.

13/05/2013: The training was offered by IBA Dosimetry and was lead by M.Birkner. Monte Carlo simulations are a powerful tool to understading the physics beyond the working of the detector, copleting the information acquired by the experimental work. The padronance of this toll would give me lots of improovment to my research acitivity.

24/06/2013: During this training I had the opportunity to follow all the required step for the daily quality routine in the Radiotherapy Unit at Neumarkt hospital.


Conferences

Venue: Padova (Italy)

Date: 15-19 April

The school "Detector and electronics for high Energy Physics, Astrophysics, Space Application and Medical Physics" offered a valid gamma of lectures on silicon Detectors. I decided to attend the school because the main topic were focused on Macroscopic and Microscopic radiation damage and front end electronics. The damage on radiation was a new topic for me, and it has given me a basic for the research activity related to my detector.

Venue: CERN, Geneve

Date: 13-14 June

The Mid-Term Review was a great opportunity to meet for the first time the other ESR students. I had my first presentation about Dosepix and moreover the visit at ATLAS experiment was really exciting, more than expected.


Experimental activities

Date: April- May 2013

In April I started the investigation on the response of the Dosepix in "higher" energy range in collaboration with the Dosepix Group at ECAP, University of Erlangen- Nürnberg. After some experimental sessions and some exchange within the collaboration, some test to control the stability of the tube has been performed to start to understand the pile-up problem.

Date: May 2013

After some spectra acquisitions, the energy calibration of the detector was needed. After some experimental sessions the right experimental set-up has been founded. I started to work with some scripts developed by University of Erlangen, refreshing and improving my computer skills.


Activities 2013Q3

Training

27/09/2013: IQ (IBA Quality) training was developed few years ago, in order to make the employer aware about the attitude and the importance to work in a health environment.

12/09/2013: The training allows me using the Xray tube at IBA Dosimetry for my experimental activity. And using a device which belongs to a Second Standard Laboratory.


Experimental activities

Date: July- August

In these months my time was spent in adapt the algorithm given me by I. Ritter (Phd University of Erlangen) to my experimental data. After this period I feel my self more confortable about computing and using of Unix shell. This work is quite ready to be presented at IEEE at the end of October.

Date: July -August

Support to the research activity of F.Tennert (Diploma Student) to perform a new calibration method for the detector.


II ARDENT Workshop

October 14- October 18

Venue: Milan, Italy

The Workshop took part during the celebration of the POLIMI's 150th anniversary. During the week, our projects have been discussed with the EU Project Officer, we attended lectures from expert about micro and nano dosimetry, subject new for me but in my opinion extremly important in the future of the radiation therapy. We had also the possibility to show our work to students from high school. It was a great pleasure to help my collegues in the dissemination of their work. Dissemination is an important task in the life of a resercher.

2013 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD

October 27 - November 2

Venue: COEX, Seoul, Corea

Oral Presentation during the special workshop "New Detector Technologies in Radiation Dosimetry and its Applications": "Characterization of a new Photon counting Detector with XRF"

Experimental Activities

November/December

Test Finger for Dosepix detector

A test finger has been developed to protect the board during the measurements session

Detector Characterization: Analog Pile-up

Venue: IBA Dosimetry GmbH, Schwarzenbruck, DE

In order to reduce the distortion of the reconstructed spectra due to analog pile-up, it has been investigate the right filter material and thickness to reduce the flux impinging on the detector.

The ratio between the counts of big and small pixels is constant in pile-up free conditions.

Secondment

10-28 February

Topic: Characterization of Dosepix detector

Venue: CERN, Microelectronic Group

During my secondment, I worked with the chip designer Winnie Wong, Erik Fröjdh (ESR 2) in collaboration with the Medipix Team at CERN. I gain a deeper knowledge on the chip architecture and we started the investigation of temperature stability and radiation hardness of the assembly.

During my secondment, the Medipix collaboration meeting took place and I had the possibility to give a presentation about the work done on the chip. The title of the presentatin was: "Dosepix Detector as kVp-meter in Radiology and Mammography: First steps"

Conference

25 March

Topic: DPG Annual Conference

Venue: Mainz, Germany, DE

During the annual meeting of the german physics soiety, I had an oral presentation with the title : " Characterization of the Dosepix Detector under clinical conditions"

Experimental Activities

April

Stereotactic Siliocon Diodes

More investigations on silicon stereotactic diodes. The dependence of sensitivity with the dose per pulse of a Linac has been tested for flattening and unflattening field, in order to cover the dose rate range used in the clinical treatments.

The measurements have been repeated also for the ion chamber array prototype under tests by my collegue Michele (ESR 11). In this experimental session, we also measured the pulse frequency of the Linac at the ICC Doselab at IBa Dosimetry.

Dosepix projects

April

Tests on the firmware and general stability of a new testboard have been performed in collaboration with other ohd collegues of the University of Erlangen.

Secondments

18-24 May

Topic: Buiseness and Administration Training

As first part of a B&A sessions, all the ESR took part to theoretical lessons on the following topic:

  • Introduction to knowledge Transfer
  • Project Management
  • Entrepreneurship for Scientists.

Experimental Session

July

Topic: Temperature instability of Dosepix detector

After the first results during my secondments, a deeper investigation on the stability of the detector under temperature fluctuations have been performed.

Tests have been performed using a climate chamber. The main instability source was found to be located in the PLL circuit, who provides the time unit of the ToT signal.<\p>

A possible solution is to force the detector to work at a stable temperature warming up the assembly.

Dosepix Project

July 7

A workshop in collaboration with the University of Erlangen and IBA Dosimetry it was organized in order to point the status of the project.

The dector shows a good potentiality as personal dosimeter. A summary about what it is required by the regulations have been prepared. Open issue about the application of Dosepix detector as kvp-meter has been analyzed and discussed by the partecipants.

Experimental Activities

August-September

Topic: Characterization of silicon diodes for small field dosimetry

Sensitivity versus dose and dose per pulse have been tested for irradiated silicon diodes. This is essential to the test the effect on the aging in the characterization of a detector used in radiotherapy.

Third Annual ARDENT Workshop

September, 29th - October, 2nd

Venue: Schwarzenbruck - Germany

The Workshop took place at IBA Dosimetry. All the ESRs presented the work performed over the last year. A two-days training course on Quality Assurance in Therapy and Diagnostics and on Semiconductor Detectors was part of the workshop.

Here you can find more informations about the workshop and some pictures as well!.

I took part in the practical session about Quality Assurance in Diagnostics. I hope my collegues found it good!

Conference

8-10 October

Int. Conf. on Radiation Effects on Semiconductor Materials Detectors and Devices

Venue: Florence, Italy

During the conference I presented the results of the collaboration between the University of Florence and IBA Dosimetry about semiconductor detectors used as quality devices in external radiotherapy.

The title of the oral presentation was : " Development of silicon monolithic arrays for dosimetry in external beam radiotherapy".

Experimental Session

3-7 November

Venue: ANKA Synchrotron, Karlsruhe Institute of Tecnology, Beam Line: TOMO-TOPO

Together with Erik Fröjdh (ESR 2), the Dosepix count rate capability with monoenergethic photons has been investigated.

Experimental Session

17-26 November

Measurements session at UPENN University with 1D monolithic Silicon array

Venue: The Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, Philadelphia

A new detector to know: a high spatial resolution monolithic siliocon array has been developed by IBA Dosimetry and the University of florence in the past years.

The array has a spatial resolution of 1mm and previous tests showed good dosimetric performances for the use in externla beam radiotherapy.

In collaboration of the medical physics residence of PCAM, we tested the detector as patient quality assurance in IMRT and SBRT treatments and as machine QA for a Cyberknife facility.

Training

12-23 January

Venue: ST Microelectronics, Catania, Italy

Together with my collegue Michele (ESR 11), we spent two weeks at the sicilian site of ST Microelectronics. in the morning session we learned about: company structures and organization, the develpment of project in a company, market rules and intellectual properties.

In the afternoons, we had the possibilities to visit the production site and increase our knowledge in the techniques for the production of silicon devices.

Experimental session

February

Radiation tolerance of Dosepix detector

Deep investigations on the radiation tolerance of dosepix detector started on Febrary. The goal of the investigation is check the behaviour of the assembly under small amount of dose (50 Gy step) and to find the cumulated dose which stabilize the chip electronics.

The experimantal session has been performed at the University of Erlangen.

Dosepix Project

April-May

Dosepix detector as kVp meter in Mammography

An experimenthal method was performed in order to extract information on the kVp of a mammographic tube by the analysis of the spectra reconstructed by Dosepix detector.

An additional filtration of 0.1mm Cu was placed upon the detector to reduce the analog pile up.

The 0.992 quantile of the reconstructed spectra can give information of the diagnostic tube within the limit fixed by the regulation (IEC 61676).

The method was tested for a clincal mammographic device, from 22 to 35 kV operation voltage, 20 mAs.

Paper published

April

The paper "Development of silicon monolithic arrays for dosimetry in external beam radiotherapy", F.Bisello et al. was published in the Nuclear Instrument and Methods, with the following doi: 10.1016/j.nima.2015.04.064 .

Activities 2013Q1

Training

07/02/2013: Protection of own working safety and safety of the colleagues.

20/02/2013: Radioprotection lessons and German Normative.

27/02/2013: The training has been lead by A.Giuliacci (IBA Dosimetry). The training included some teorithical lessons including the most important definitions in radiotherapic devces as: Isocenter, SSD (Source-Surface Distance), SDD (Source-Detector Distance). Moreover the lessons went through the structure of a LINAC accelerator and different ionization chamber used in the quality control of the accelarator. In the second part of the training we performed some measurements about beam profile and PDD (Percentage Depth Dose).

Experimental activities

Date: February 2013

Preliminary Studies: Threshold Equalization of the detector, Analog Test- Pulse Calibration. Electronics of the chip, DAC structure. Working Mode of the detector (Counting Mode, Dosi Mode, Integration Mode)

Date: March 2013

Measurements at Mammo device (IBA Dosimetry): Acquisition of bremsstrahlung Spectra at different Energies.

Activities 2013Q2

Training

12/04/2013: Company training about Quality Manager

22/05/2013: This training has given complementary information to the Relative Dosimetry attended in the first quartile (February 2013, lead by A.Giuliacci). The aim of this second part was the understanding of calibration procedure at Linac device. The trainig went through the definition of dose and the theoretical explanation of the cavity theory, to end with the protocols that are used in Germany and in the European Union, which regulate the calibration procedure of the clinical devices. The explanation of these protocols was really usefull for me, because they also are a baseline to understand and acquire a method of working in th eplanning of my research activity.

13/05/2013: The training was offered by IBA Dosimetry and was lead by M.Birkner. Monte Carlo simulations are a powerful tool to understading the physics beyond the working of the detector, copleting the information acquired by the experimental work. The padronance of this toll would give me lots of improovment to my research acitivity.

24/06/2013: During this training I had the opportunity to follow all the required step for the daily quality routine in the Radiotherapy Unit at Neumarkt hospital.


Conferences

Venue: Padova (Italy)

Date: 15-19 April

The school "Detector and electronics for high Energy Physics, Astrophysics, Space Application and Medical Physics" offered a valid gamma of lectures on silicon Detectors. I decided to attend the school because the main topic were focused on Macroscopic and Microscopic radiation damage and front end electronics. The damage on radiation was a new topic for me, and it has given me a basic for the research activity related to my detector.

Venue: CERN, Geneve

Date: 13-14 June

The Mid-Term Review was a great opportunity to meet for the first time the other ESR students. I had my first presentation about Dosepix and moreover the visit at ATLAS experiment was really exciting, more than expected.


Experimental activities

Date: April- May 2013

In April I started the investigation on the response of the Dosepix in "higher" energy range in collaboration with the Dosepix Group at ECAP, University of Erlangen- Nürnberg. After some experimental sessions and some exchange within the collaboration, some test to control the stability of the tube has been performed to start to understand the pile-up problem.

Date: May 2013

After some spectra acquisitions, the energy calibration of the detector was needed. After some experimental sessions the right experimental set-up has been founded. I started to work with some scripts developed by University of Erlangen, refreshing and improving my computer skills.


Activities 2013Q3

Training

27/09/2013: IQ (IBA Quality) training was developed few years ago, in order to make the employer aware about the attitude and the importance to work in a health environment.

12/09/2013: The training allows me using the Xray tube at IBA Dosimetry for my experimental activity. And using a device which belongs to a Second Standard Laboratory.


Experimental activities

Date: July- August

In these months my time was spent in adapt the algorithm given me by I. Ritter (Phd University of Erlangen) to my experimental data. After this period I feel my self more confortable about computing and using of Unix shell. This work is quite ready to be presented at IEEE at the end of October.

Date: July -August

Support to the research activity of F.Tennert (Diploma Student) to perform a new calibration method for the detector.


II ARDENT Workshop

October 14- October 18

Venue: Milan, Italy

The Workshop took part during the celebration of the POLIMI's 150th anniversary. During the week, our projects have been discussed with the EU Project Officer, we attended lectures from expert about micro and nano dosimetry, subject new for me but in my opinion extremly important in the future of the radiation therapy. We had also the possibility to show our work to students from high school. It was a great pleasure to help my collegues in the dissemination of their work. Dissemination is an important task in the life of a resercher.

2013 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD

October 27 - November 2

Venue: COEX, Seoul, Corea

Oral Presentation during the special workshop "New Detector Technologies in Radiation Dosimetry and its Applications": "Characterization of a new Photon counting Detector with XRF"

Experimental Activities

November/December

Test Finger for Dosepix detector

A test finger has been developed to protect the board during the measurements session

Detector Characterization: Analog Pile-up

Venue: IBA Dosimetry GmbH, Schwarzenbruck, DE

In order to reduce the distortion of the reconstructed spectra due to analog pile-up, it has been investigate the right filter material and thickness to reduce the flux impinging on the detector.

The ratio between the counts of big and small pixels is constant in pile-up free conditions.

Secondment

10-28 February

Topic: Characterization of Dosepix detector

Venue: CERN, Microelectronic Group

During my secondment, I worked with the chip designer Winnie Wong, Erik Fröjdh (ESR 2) in collaboration with the Medipix Team at CERN. I gain a deeper knowledge on the chip architecture and we started the investigation of temperature stability and radiation hardness of the assembly.

During my secondment, the Medipix collaboration meeting took place and I had the possibility to give a presentation about the work done on the chip. The title of the presentatin was: "Dosepix Detector as kVp-meter in Radiology and Mammography: First steps"

Conference

25 March

Topic: DPG Annual Conference

Venue: Mainz, Germany, DE

During the annual meeting of the german physics soiety, I had an oral presentation with the title : " Characterization of the Dosepix Detector under clinical conditions"

Experimental Activities

April

Stereotactic Siliocon Diodes

More investigations on silicon stereotactic diodes. The dependence of sensitivity with the dose per pulse of a Linac has been tested for flattening and unflattening field, in order to cover the dose rate range used in the clinical treatments.

The measurements have been repeated also for the ion chamber array prototype under tests by my collegue Michele (ESR 11). In this experimental session, we also measured the pulse frequency of the Linac at the ICC Doselab at IBa Dosimetry.

Dosepix projects

April

Tests on the firmware and general stability of a new testboard have been performed in collaboration with other ohd collegues of the University of Erlangen.

Secondments

18-24 May

Topic: Buiseness and Administration Training

As first part of a B&A sessions, all the ESR took part to theoretical lessons on the following topic:

  • Introduction to knowledge Transfer
  • Project Management
  • Entrepreneurship for Scientists.

Experimental Session

July

Topic: Temperature instability of Dosepix detector

After the first results during my secondments, a deeper investigation on the stability of the detector under temperature fluctuations have been performed.

Tests have been performed using a climate chamber. The main instability source was found to be located in the PLL circuit, who provides the time unit of the ToT signal.<\p>

A possible solution is to force the detector to work at a stable temperature warming up the assembly.

Dosepix Project

July 7

A workshop in collaboration with the University of Erlangen and IBA Dosimetry it was organized in order to point the status of the project.

The dector shows a good potentiality as personal dosimeter. A summary about what it is required by the regulations have been prepared. Open issue about the application of Dosepix detector as kvp-meter has been analyzed and discussed by the partecipants.

Experimental Activities

August-September

Topic: Characterization of silicon diodes for small field dosimetry

Sensitivity versus dose and dose per pulse have been tested for irradiated silicon diodes. This is essential to the test the effect on the aging in the characterization of a detector used in radiotherapy.

Third Annual ARDENT Workshop

September, 29th - October, 2nd

Venue: Schwarzenbruck - Germany

The Workshop took place at IBA Dosimetry. All the ESRs presented the work performed over the last year. A two-days training course on Quality Assurance in Therapy and Diagnostics and on Semiconductor Detectors was part of the workshop.

Here you can find more informations about the workshop and some pictures as well!.

I took part in the practical session about Quality Assurance in Diagnostics. I hope my collegues found it good!

Conference

8-10 October

Int. Conf. on Radiation Effects on Semiconductor Materials Detectors and Devices

Venue: Florence, Italy

During the conference I presented the results of the collaboration between the University of Florence and IBA Dosimetry about semiconductor detectors used as quality devices in external radiotherapy.

The title of the oral presentation was : " Development of silicon monolithic arrays for dosimetry in external beam radiotherapy".

Experimental Session

3-7 November

Venue: ANKA Synchrotron, Karlsruhe Institute of Tecnology, Beam Line: TOMO-TOPO

Together with Erik Fröjdh (ESR 2), the Dosepix count rate capability with monoenergethic photons has been investigated.

Experimental Session

17-26 November

Measurements session at UPENN University with 1D monolithic Silicon array

Venue: The Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, Philadelphia

A new detector to know: a high spatial resolution monolithic siliocon array has been developed by IBA Dosimetry and the University of florence in the past years.

The array has a spatial resolution of 1mm and previous tests showed good dosimetric performances for the use in externla beam radiotherapy.

In collaboration of the medical physics residence of PCAM, we tested the detector as patient quality assurance in IMRT and SBRT treatments and as machine QA for a Cyberknife facility.

Training

12-23 January

Venue: ST Microelectronics, Catania, Italy

Together with my collegue Michele (ESR 11), we spent two weeks at the sicilian site of ST Microelectronics. in the morning session we learned about: company structures and organization, the develpment of project in a company, market rules and intellectual properties.

In the afternoons, we had the possibilities to visit the production site and increase our knowledge in the techniques for the production of silicon devices.

Experimental session

February

Radiation tolerance of Dosepix detector

Deep investigations on the radiation tolerance of dosepix detector started on Febrary. The goal of the investigation is check the behaviour of the assembly under small amount of dose (50 Gy step) and to find the cumulated dose which stabilize the chip electronics.

The experimantal session has been performed at the University of Erlangen.

Dosepix Project

April-May

Dosepix detector as kVp meter in Mammography

An experimenthal method was performed in order to extract information on the kVp of a mammographic tube by the analysis of the spectra reconstructed by Dosepix detector.

An additional filtration of 0.1mm Cu was placed upon the detector to reduce the analog pile up.

The 0.992 quantile of the reconstructed spectra can give information of the diagnostic tube within the limit fixed by the regulation (IEC 61676).

The method was tested for a clincal mammographic device, from 22 to 35 kV operation voltage, 20 mAs.

Paper published

April

The paper "Development of silicon monolithic arrays for dosimetry in external beam radiotherapy", F.Bisello et al. was published in the Nuclear Instrument and Methods, with the following doi: 10.1016/j.nima.2015.04.064 .