Design and validation of a Robotic Patient Positioning System

Find new and more efficient techniques in the treatment of cancer diseases is one of the main challenges in which the modern medicine is involved. Radiation therapy represents, in this field, an excellent alternative for inoperable patients, or when the surgery is rejected. Among all the used radiation therapies, proton therapy ensures well known dosimetric advantages in patients, and minimizes possible risks to damage vital organs causing unwanted side effects. Here is presented the "Enhanced Radiotherapy with HAdrons (ERHA)" project intended to design an innovative, compact and cheaper system for proton therapy delivery treatments. As part of this bigger system, a new prototype of "Robotised Patient Positioning System (RPPS)" is studied to provide an alternative solution compared with those commonly used. Thanks to a 7 Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) manipulator carrying a patient lying down on a couch top attached to the robot end effector, the system must align the tumor target (inside the patient body) with respect to a fixed particle beam entering the room through beam delivery system. The following thesis project will follow all the steps in analysing the RPPS system, starting from the design stage until the validation tests.