Design and Implementation of Alignment software for a Digital Tracking Calorimeter used for proton CT

Abstract

Computed Tomography, also called CT, is a diagnostic method used to create images of a patient’s body. These images can be used to identify or discover illness in the imaged patient. Tomography is nothing new and has been around since the early 1920s. Today such images are also used to plan and execute radiation therapy. A prototype of a Proton Computed Tomography(pCT) system is currently under development by a research team at the University of Bergen and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. This project introduces proton-based imaging instead of the standard photon-based sensors in today’s CT machines. Protons are used in-place-of photons based on the underlying properties of a proton particle and the reduction in overall time one round of treatment would take for each patient. The Proton Computed Tomography system is built using a chip called ALice PIxel DEtector(ALPIDE) developed at CERN. Several ALPIDE chips are used to construct the sensor, which can introduce accuracy issues in the output data, as these chips can only be mounted with limited mechanical precision. This thesis introduces the software theory behind a system used to align the chips based on output data from the sensor.