Method for operating a linear accelerator, linear accelerator, and material-discriminating radioscopy device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2018139836-A1
Application number	US-201715813860-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Nov 15, 2017
Priority date	Nov 15, 2016
Publication date	May 17, 2018
Grant date	—

Abstract

A linear accelerator is operated by emitting charged particles from a particle source and accelerating the particles in an accelerator by wayof a high-frequency alternating field in such a way that pulses of charged particles are generated. A high-frequency power is periodically supplied by way of high-frequency pulses to the accelerator in order to generate the high-frequency alternating field. A particle stream emitted by the particle source is varied during a HF pulse length of the high-frequency pulse in such a way that the pulse formed during the HF pulse length has at least two sub-pulses with different mean energies per particle. There is also described a linear accelerator that carries out the method and a material-discriminating radioscopy device with a linear accelerator of this kind.

First claim

1 . A method for operating a linear accelerator, the method comprising:
emitting charged particles by a particle source; periodically supplying a high-frequency power to an accelerator by way of high-frequency pulses in order to generate a high-frequency alternating field and accelerating the charged particles in the accelerator by the high-frequency alternating field to thereby generate pulses of charged particles; and varying a particle stream emitted by the particle source during an HF pulse length of a high-frequency pulse in such a way that the pulse formed during the HF pulse length has at least two sub-pulses with mutually different mean energies per particle.

2 . The method according to claim 1 , which comprises generating at least two sub-pulses time-delayed by about 1 μs to 3 μs by changing a stream strength of a particle stream during the HF pulse length of the high-frequency pulse.

3 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the HF pulse length of the high-frequency pulse lies between 2 μs and 10 μs.

4 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein a mean energy per particle lies within a range of more than 1 MeV and less than 20 MeV.

5 . The method according to claim 1 , which comprises injecting a particle stream into the accelerator during an oscillation phase in order to generate one of the at least two sub-pulses.

6 . The method according to claim 1 , which comprises using a pulse of charged particles containing the at least two sub-pulses for generating X-ray radiation.

7 . The method according to claim 6 , which comprises generating material-discriminating radioscopic images of an object by way of an X-ray detector that detects the X-ray radiation.

8 . The method according to claim 7 , which comprises causing the object and the X-ray detector to move relative to each other during acquisition of the radioscopic images.

9 . A linear accelerator, comprising:
a particle source for emitting a particle stream; an accelerator having a plurality of cavity resonators that are coupled to one another, said accelerator being configured to periodically receive a high-frequency power by way of high-frequency pulses having a HF pulse length in order to generate a high-frequency alternating field; a controller connected to said particle source and configured to vary a particle stream emitted by said particle source during an HF pulse length of the high-frequency pulse in such a way that a pulse of charged particles formed during the HF pulse length has at least two sub-pulses having mutually different mean energies per particle.

10 . A material-discriminating radioscopy device, comprising:
an X-ray emitter and an X-ray detector disposed to form an intermediate region for introducing an object to be X-rayed between said X-ray emitter and said X-ray detector; said X-ray emitter having a linear accelerator according to claim 9 configured to load a target with pulses of charged particles; and an evaluation device configured to generate radioscopic images from data detected by way of said X-ray detector.

Assignees

• Siemens Healthcare Gmbh

Inventors

• Koschmieder Martin
• Moeller Marvin
• Mueller Sven
• Willing Stefan

Classifications

• H05H9/04 Primary

  Standing-wave linear accelerators · CPC title

• H05H2007/022

  Pulsed systems · CPC title

• H05H7/02 Primary

  Circuits or systems for supplying or feeding radio-frequency energy · CPC title

• H05H2007/025

  Radiofrequency systems · CPC title

• G01V5/0016

  Physics · mapped topic