Proton Calorimetry/Meetings/2025/01/15

Minutes for UCL Proton Beam Therapy Group Meetings, 15th January

Present

Joe Bateman, Sonia Escribano, Simon Jolly, Andreas Korn , Raffaella Radogna (via teams), Harry Barnett, Matt Warren

Raffaella Radogna

• Started filling wiki page for plans for test beam in Trento
• Received sheets of tuffnel material - whether there will be an updated CAD from harry - on how to proceed on frame for second prototype
• Will discuss with Bari mech eng to discuss drawings for second prototype designs etc

Harry Barnett

• Just QuARC enclosure windows left to design
• Wheels have been added in CAD
• Everything else pretty much designed - prioritise everything over the wheels
• Has discussed with Sonia to mount fpga and rasb pi to ceiling - but ideally add a shock absorber for the circuits
  • And ensure that raspberry pi in its case with heatsink when attached to lid with shock absorber doesn't collide with scintillator stack when closing lid
• Quickest route to get scintillator sheets manufactured in shortest time is via John and Wayne in Wales

Simon Jolly

• Still waiting on harry for updated quarc casing and scintillator sheets machining before
• Harry can send raffy design for updated quart and enclosure to get idea for spacing
  • If need can duplicate design with slightly larger case with slightly more longitudinal space
    • i.e. design without breadboard but with two rails
• We have correct read back pattern from Oxford boards - DAQ readout chain is now working and works as designed and signal is much cleaner than before
• Can daisy chain 4 boards together and saw 4 read back patterns
• But 4 small errors on ddc
  • Reset signal isn't going through buffer (I.e. takes input through Schmidt triggers)
  • Upstream usb connector is 180degrees out
  • Potential for ground loops on daisy chaining ddc boards
  • Can't currently put photodiodes on board since the boards are missing sockets for them to slot in
• About 4 weeks turn around for Pete to update circuit boards and get them manufactured

Sonia Escribano

• Create new prod.sh for terminal based daq
• Look at what flags current shell script is pulling it out
• Try and make so that it doesn't require everything in a specific order
• Looking at live calibration data
  • 10% difference between live calibration and post-calibration
  • Post-calibration reads data twice
• Reverse options no longer working - but only clatterbridge board - but no need to worry about fixing since next clatterbridge module will be half sized ddc board
• Information window on gui being updated
• Higher priority for next quarc only beam test - what do we need that we don't currently have

Joe Bateman

• Investigating difference in dose-depth curves between TOPAS and FRED
• Bragg peaks appear to match in plateau but not in Bragg peak and distal fall off (FRED has sharper peak and deposits more dose in Bragg peak)
• Issue seemingly disappears when using mono energetic beam (150 MeV) with no spread - so likely to do with the way the code handles energy straggling
• In discussion with Giorgio and Ilaria from Maestro to discuss issue
• Continue to work on getting QuARC Geant4 simulation up to date and running.