Bi-material Bolus for Minimizing the Non-uniformity of Proton Dose Distribution

Generally uniform dose distribution is assumed to be formed in a target region when a conventional dose formation method using a broad proton beam, a fixed modulation technique, a bolus and an aperture is employed. However, actual situations differ. We usually find non-uniformity in the target region. This is due to the insertion of a range-compensating bolus before the patient. Since the range-compensating bolus has an irregular shape, the scattering in the bolus depends on the lateral position. Dose distribution is overlapping results of dose distribution of pencil-proton beams traversing different lateral positions of the bolus. The lateral extent of dose distribution of each pencil beam traversing the different position differs each other at the same depth in the target object. This is a cause of the non-uniformity of the dose distribution. Therefore the same lateral extent of dose distribution should be attained for different pencil beams at the same depth to obtain a uniform dose distribution. For that purpose, we propose here a bi-material bolus. The bi-material bolus consists of a low-Z material determining mainly the range loss and a high-Z material defining mainly the scattering in the bolus. After passing through the bi-material bolus, protons traversing different lateral positions will have different residual range yet with the same lateral spread at a certain depth. Using the optimized bi-material bolus, we can obtain a more uniform dose distribution in the target region as expected.