Influence of beamline and scanning magnets on the magnetic fringe field of a proton PBS nozzle

Purpose/Objective
Real-time soft-tissue image guidance is a desirable concept to improve the targeting precision of proton therapy. In 2017, the first prototype of an MR-integrated proton therapy setup was realised at our horizontal fixed research beamline. Moving towards a clinical application this in-beam MRI system shall be transferred to a pencil beam scanning (PBS) research beamline that provides volumetric dose spot delivery. A magnetic survey was performed to quantify the effects of beamline and scanning magnets on the environmental magnetic field.
Material and Methods
The magnetic fringe field at the PBS nozzle was measured by a tri-axial Hall-probe magnetometer (THM 1176-LF, Metrolab) at two positions: (P1) at a lateral position 700 mm from the center of the scanning magnets, and (P2) at the planned magnetic isocenter of the in-beam MR scanner, which is 2270 mm downstream from the last scanning magnet on the beam central axis. Measurement point P1 was chosen to be able to differentiate between magnetic field changes due to energizing the beamline (quadrupole) and the scanning (dipole) magnets. Two maps of PBS spots were delivered by the PBS nozzle: (M1) consisted of 16 energy layers ranging from 70 to 230 MeV (steps of 10 MeV) with a single central spot for each layer, and (M2) used a single energy of 200 MeV with a field size of (200 x 200) mm2 and a step width of 5 mm, resulting in 41x41 spots. The magnets were energized to deliver maps M1 and M2 to study the magnetic field effects of changing beam energies and changing spot positions, respectively, but no beam was transported for radiation protection reasons. The Hall-probe logged all 3 magnetic field components during spot map scanning by Labview-based software (THM1176 v4.0, Metrolab) at a sample frequency of 10 Hz.
Results
For position P1, the magnetic field changes due to setting the beamline magnets to the 16 energy levels, as well as operating the scanning magnets to the 41 spot rows can be clearly observed (Fig. 1), with maximum amplitudes |ΔBmax| of up to 28.6 µT and 55.3 µT, for maps M1 and M2, respectively. For position P2, the |ΔBmax| was 9.0 µT and 10.1 µT for M1 and M2, respectively. This translates into an off-resonance frequency shift of 383.4 Hz and 430.3 Hz for 1H-MR imaging, respectively.
Conclusion
Significant changes in the environmental magnetic fringe field of a proton PBS beamline are measurable due to the operation of its beamline and scanning magnets. These changes translate into off-resonance frequency shifts that could cause significant MR image shifts in the frequency encoding direction. This needs to be confirmed by magnetic field mapping around the magnetic isocenter of the MRI scanner once it has been installed at the PBS nozzle. To counteract this effect, either the image shifts need to be compensated for or the PBS nozzle needs to be magnetically shielded from the MRI scanner.