Proton radiotherapy has been shown to offer a significant dosimetric advantage in cancer patients, in comparison to conventional radiotherapy, with a decrease in dose to healthy tissue and organs at risk, because the bulk of the beam energy is deposited in the Bragg peak to be located within a tumour. However, it should be kept in mind that radiotherapy of cancer is still accompanied by adverse side effects, and a better understanding and improvement of radiotherapy can extend the life expectancy of patients following the treatment of malignant tumours. In this study, the dose distributions measured with thermoluminescent detectors (TLDs) inside a tissue-equivalent adult human phantom exposed for lung and prostate cancer using the modern proton beam scanning radiotherapy technique were compared. Since the TLD detection efficiency depends on the ionization density of the radiation to be detected, and since this efficiency is detector specific, four different types of TLDs were used to compare their response in the mixed radiation fields. Additionally, the dose distributions from two different cancer treatment modalities were compared using the selected detectors. The measured dose values were benchmarked against Monte Carlo simulations and available literature data. The results indicate an increase in the lateral dose with an increase of the primary proton energy. However, the radiation quality factor of the mixed radiation increases by 20% in the vicinity to the target for the lower initial proton energy, due to the production of secondary charged particles of low-energy and short range. For the cases presented here the MTS-N TLD detector seems to be the most optimal tool for dose measurements within the target volume, while the MCP-N TLD detector, due to an interplay of its enhanced thermal neutron response and decreased detection efficiency to highly ionising radiation, is a better choice for the out-of-field measurements. The pairs of MTS-6 and MTS-7 TLDs used also in this study allowed for a direct measurement of the neutron dose equivalent. Before it can be concluded that they offer an alternative to the time-consuming nuclear track detectors, however, more research is needed to unambiguously confirm whether this observation was just accidental or whether it only applies to certain cases. Since there is no universal detector, which would allow the determination of the dosimetric quantities relevant for risk estimation, this work expands the knowledge necessary to improve the quality of dosimetry data and might help scientists and clinicians in choosing the right tools to measure radiation doses in mixed radiation fields.

与传统放射治疗相比，质子放射治疗已被证明在癌症患者中具有显着的剂量学优势，减少了对健康组织和处于危险中的器官的剂量，因为大部分束能量沉积在要定位的布拉格峰中肿瘤内。但需要注意的是，癌症放疗仍然伴随着不良副作用，更好地了解和改进放疗可以延长恶性肿瘤治疗后患者的预期寿命。在这项研究中，比较了使用现代质子束扫描放射治疗技术在暴露于肺癌和前列腺癌的组织等效成人体模内用热释光检测器 (TLD) 测量的剂量分布。由于 TLD 检测效率取决于要检测的辐射的电离密度，并且由于该效率是检测器特定的，因此使用四种不同类型的 TLD 来比较它们在混合辐射场中的响应。此外，使用选定的检测器比较了两种不同癌症治疗方式的剂量分布。测量的剂量值与蒙特卡罗模拟和可用的文献数据进行了基准测试。结果表明横向剂量随着初级质子能量的增加而增加。然而，由于产生了低能量和短程的二次带电粒子，混合辐射的辐射品质因数在目标附近对于较低的初始质子能量增加了 20%。对于此处介绍的案例，MTS-N TLD 探测器似乎是目标体积内剂量测量的最佳工具，而 MCP-N TLD 探测器由于其增强的热中子响应和降低的探测效率的相互作用而达到高度电离辐射，是外场测量的更好选择。本研究中还使用的 MTS-6 和 MTS-7 TLD 对允许直接测量中子剂量当量。然而，在得出结论它们提供了耗时的核轨道探测器的替代方案之前，还需要更多的研究来明确确认这种观察是偶然的还是仅适用于某些情况。由于没有通用检测器，可以确定与风险估计相关的剂量学量，