Integr8 Imaging Group

Our research

Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) is an advanced form of radiotherapy that may offer superior dose localisation when compared to conventional radiotherapy. This is primarily due to the well-defined range of protons in matter, which is defined by the energy of the particle and results in most of the dose being delivered at the end of the particle path. This allows healthy tissue to be better spared from radiation while maintaining the required tumour coverage and is particularly advantageous for cancers near vulnerable organs and/or paediatric patients. In the UK, PBT has seen recent growth following a £250M investment by the NHS, creating two centres offering PBT nationally at UCLH in London and The Christie in Manchester. 

Unfortunately, the superior dose conformity makes PBT susceptible to uncertainties in the proton range, which can drastically alter the actual delivered treatment. These can arise at several stages in the treatment delivery pipeline: in the proton beam delivery system itself, the treatment planning stage when translating CT-scans of treatment areas to proton stopping powers, and during treatment from patient setup uncertainty and anatomical changes in the patient. Consequently, the target dose delivery region must be widened to mitigate the range uncertainty, which hinders the expected benefits from PBT. It is widely understood that range uncertainty is the biggest technical challenge in realising the full potential of PBT. 

The Integr8 Imaging group in the department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL is pioneering advanced imaging guidance for PBT through the development of a clinical integrated-mode proton radiography device. The technology developed by the Integr8 group produces proton radiographs, which are similar to conventional X-ray radiographs but use the proton beam source to generate images. Proton radiographs inform on the anatomy of the patient as seen from the beam’s eye view.  The development of a proton radiography device can help address range uncertainty challenges and provide a practical solution for imaging with protons and a non-invasive method for real-time monitoring of the treatment beam to safeguard against changes from patient setup and organ motion. Such a device could open up the prospect for new sites to be treated with PBT in the UK, such as lung cancers, whilst also improving overall treatment quality and efficiency. 

The device under development uses a monolithic scintillator block imaged by 3 optical CCD cameras that capture the visible light emitted by the delivered beam in the block, where fast and accurate image reconstruction algorithms are then deployed to reconstruct patient radiographs. An exciting, unique feature of this device is to perform real-time image reconstruction, making it ideally suited to track organ motion in real-time for the treatment of lung cancers. Current research programmes are focusing on shrinking the device footprint, optimising its dose efficiency and investigating practical applications both with protons and heavier ions such as carbon. 

Simple schematic showing detection principle 

(a) Assembled detector in enclosure, (b) raw images of proton beams from each view, (c) reconstructed images of anthropomorphic head phantom. 

Our members

Former members 

• Dr Mikael Simard – Senior Research Fellow
• Dr Ryan Fullarton – PhD Student