Design and optimization of a dedicated Faraday cup for UHDR proton dosimetry: Implementation in a UHDR irradiation station.

We describe in detail an Ultra High Dose Rate (UHDR) setup on a 2 MV tandem accelerator for investigating the FLASH effect in radiotherapy. Addressing UHDR dosimetry challenges, we have developed a specialized Faraday Cup (FC) as a dose rate-independent solution. Utilizing Monte Carlo simulations, the geometry and materials used for the FC's design has been optimized for a 4 MeV proton beam. According to the simulations, the virtual error on the charge collection is negligible. This three-part UHDR setup also integrates a beam profiler to ensure the beam homogeneity and an electrostatic chopper to irradiate for precise short times (down to 10 μs), replicating the macro beam structure of typical clinical proton accelerator structures such as the S2C2 and C230 (IBA, Louvain-la-Neuve). The integrated setup ensures dose deposition with an error ≤ 5% for dose rate from 140 to 1000 Gy/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]