Neutron measurements with a CdTe spectrometer on a proton therapy unit

The purpose of this work was to investigate the use of a commercial cadmium-telluride detector as an absolute thermal neutron measurement device on a proton therapy unit. Experimental measurements were performed on water phantoms using a 25 mm², 1 mm thick uncollimated CdTe spectrometer. The detector was shielded using sheets of borated polyethylene minimizing the measured direct neutron spectrum from the treatment nozzle. For each measurement a significant 95.9 keV prompt gamma-ray peak resulting from ¹¹³Cd thermal neutron capture within the CdTe detector was observed. For comparison, and to identify relevant trends, all setups were simulated within the Monte Carlo code MCNP6. For a dose of 21.0 Gy to a 100 mL water phantom, 0–5 cm spread out Bragg peak (SOBP), 7760 ± 299 counts (corrected for dead-time) were measured at the detector location 10 cm from the water surface and perpendicular to the proton beam, which corresponds to an absolute fluence of 1.5 × 10⁶ thermal neutrons/cm². The delivery of 8.3 Gy, 1.5 to 6.5 SOBP within a water tank phantom resulted in 2522 ± 233 counts or 4.9 × 10⁵ thermal neutrons/cm² with the detector located 5 cm away from the surface of the water tank phantom. Using MCNP6, the simulated thermal neutron fluence was determined to be within the same order of magnitude and within a factor of 3 for all configurations. This research demonstrates the first use of cadmium-telluride (CdTe) as an absolute slow neutron detector for the application of proton therapy and neutron dosimetry.