Low-dose tomography using proton beam

Computerised tomography is widely applied to disease diagnostics. The X-ray tomography technique is now widespread. During production of X-ray tomograms the object under investigation absorbs a significant radiation dose. It is shown in this work that using a proton beam with an energy of about 300 eV for tomography allows one to reduce the dose absorbed by an object by more than one order of magnitude for same resolution proton and X-ray tomograms. This reduction is caused by distinction of protons and photons interaction with substance. The reduction of the absorbed dose reaches two orders of magnitude for near-surface zone of a beam entrance. The proton accelerator is developed for proton tomography; it can be used also for radiation therapy. The patient settles down in a special armchair, which has a possibility to turn around vertical axis and to change its vertical position. The thin proton beam extraction and control system provides scanning the assigned area. The accelerator radius is 2.5 m, the maximum power consumption in tomography mode is 120 kW, and the maximum proton energy is 330 MeV