Readout Electronics for Spatial Distribution Measurement of Neutron Beam Flux in BNCT

Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a promising cancer treatment that selectively destroys tumor cells using a neutron beam. However, accurately and fast measuring the spatial distribution of neutron flux is critical to ensuring effective treatment. To address this challenge, Micromegas detectors are applied for the first time to measure the spatial distribution of neutron beam flux in BNCT. Due to the high flux, large area, and multiple components of the BNCT beam, the design of readout electronics that can handle high counting rate, large channel numbers, high integration, and discrimination of multiple beam components is challenging. This paper proposes a targeted readout electronics system to overcome this challenge. A modular readout structure based on the PCI Express (PXIe) platform is designed for 384-channel readout. A fully parallel readout structure is developed and fast shaper parameters are optimized to achieve high counting rate for each readout channel. A multi-channel high-speed, large-capacity caching technique is developed to address the high-speed data storage problem. Digital shapers are implemented in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to achieve high integration. Tests demonstrate that each readout channel can support a counting rate of 800 kHz and achieve an excellent position resolution of 1.4 mm. Furthermore, final tests on the BNCT beam confirm that our system can successfully measure the flux spatial distribution of different neutron components.