There are about 30 particle accelerators in Ireland. All are in hospitals and are used either for radiation oncology in cancer treatment, or to create radioactive isotopes for diagnostic imaging.
Together with colleagues at the University of Kansas, we put a LHC detector into a medical linac, and for the first time were able to resolve the individual particles used in radiotherapy. This is essentially a quantum-detector for medicine that operates with a spatial resolution 100 times better, and a temporal resolution 100 million times better than the detectors that are currently used in hospitals.
A team at UCD is also studying using Medipix detector from CERN for radiation monitoring and imaging and a Ph.D thesis will be forthcoming. Training and developing these novel technologies is vital to ensure access to high-tech health care at Irish hospitals. Also on the horizon is a hadron therapy machine for the island of Ireland. This is essentially a mini-LHC for treating tumours, particularly in children.
Publications
T. Isidori et al., Performance of a low gain avalanche detector in a medical linac and characterisation of the beam profile, (2021) arXiv:2101.07134 published as Isidori et al 2021 Phys. Med. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6560/ac0587