UW Medical Center

Data Acquisition for Particle Accelerator Experiments

The University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility (UWMCF) delivers proton beams for studies of FLASH proton therapy, a new kind of radiation therapy for cancer treatment. Delivering these beams requires precise measurements of the electrical current deposited with a proton beam and the time an experimental subject (a mouse or a cell culture) is exposed to the beam. Students will work to implement a data acquisition system to replace hardware and software UWMCF currently uses to measure these parameters, improving our capacity to support ongoing research into novel cancer therapies. Students will use an oscilloscope to configure a prototype electrometer on a test bench, then integrate their solution into the UWMCF control system for online operation. The project focuses on configuring an electrometer designed for FLASH experiments. UWMCF staff will define characteristic signals generated by particle detectors used in our facility and a required control signal that must be emitted from the data acquisition hardware. Students will set up an oscilloscope to generate inputs for and monitor outputs from the electrometer, then program the electrometer to process the signals. Once configured, the electrometer will be a drop-in replacement for the existing FLASH DAQ system, which students will demonstrate by running the proton beam with UWMCF engineers using the new system. This project will produce a data acquisition system ready for use in all UWMCF FLASH experiments. It will measure proton charge collected with a particle detector and lengths of beam exposures, and it will emit a beam-disable signal when a pre-set charge has been collected. Ideally this system will be used in an online FLASH experiment to produce data for ongoing medical research as part of the capstone project.