Ionizing radiation detectors and their innovative application in proton therapy.

Through this thesis we wanted to present a branch of radiotherapy that uses proton beams to destroy tumors, namely proton therapy. This technique, although relatively new (1946), is rapidly spreading thanks to the advantage of being able to precisely locate the release of the therapeutic dose of radiation. After a brief presentation of the discovery of ionizing radiations’ history and their possible applications, we focused on the study of the protons’ behavior when they interact with matter, going to show why they are so advantageous, by studying different quantities such as stopping power, flow rate, flow rate variation, multiple coulomb scattering and proton RBE. In fact, proton therapy represents a new and important therapeutic approach that allows a large part of healthy tissue to absorb less dose than in conventional therapies that use photons or electrons. The most interesting aspect of this thesis, and still with a broad future perspective, concerns the different types of detectors used in this therapy, which play a fundamental role in the progress of nuclear medicine, leading to ever better methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. The future goal of this therapy is to develop new detectors, that are more equivalent to human tissues, both in behavior and detections, in order to obtain always better performances.