Cancer directly affects one in five individuals in their lifetime, with one in ten dying from the disease. Radiotherapy is widely prescribed to treat cancer. Proton beam therapy (PBT) is a form of radiotherapy with advantages such as maximising tumour damage while sparing healthy tissue. However, more research is required to understand the biological processes underpinning PBT. The Laser-hybrid Accelerator for Radiobiological Applications (LhARA) is a proposed PBT research facility. It is imperative that online dose mapping of the beam used at LhARA can be realised for beam quality assurance and to relate dose deposition to the observed biological effects. SmartPhantom is an online dose mapping technology being developed for LhARA which combines two emerging dosimetry techniques: ionacoustics and scintillating fibres. This project continues SmartPhantom’s development, with a focus on scintillating fibre technology. The aim of the project is to design, simulate and test a scintillating fibre detector, which will eventually be used in conjunction with an ionacoustic detector to provide online verification and dose mapping at the LhARA facility. In order to achieve this, the following sub-goals will need to be met:

• Evaluating the ideal design for the detector;
• Simulating the detector in Geant4 and k-Wave (for integration with the ionacoustic detector);
• Manually constructing the detector;
• Developing and performing quality assurance tests;
• Determining algorithms for interpreting the data produced by the detector;
• Analysing the quenched Bragg curve;
• Deriving a light-to-dose conversion factor;
• Improving on our initial designs based upon results.