Particle physicist turns his hand t… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation
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When the Higgs boson was found out in 2012, Paul Lecoq was 1 of the physicists who produced it feasible. Now, as principal investigator in the EU-funded TICAL project, he has been applying his experience in building particle detectors to problems about medical imaging.
From the quite commencing, I had the instinct that the know-how I was proposing to strengthen the performance of our particle physics detectors would have a potent influence in medical physics, he says.
Until finally lately, Lecoq labored at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as specialized coordinator for 1 of the detectors for the Big Hadron Collider. Regarded as a calorimeter, the detector makes use of dense crystalline blocks, identified as scintillators, to catch particles as they pass via. The vitality of the particle appears as flash of light which is picked up by delicate photodetectors.
In apply, a higher-vitality particle will generate a shower of other particles in the scintillator but the reaction of the scintillator is just far too slow to history the complexity of the shower.
Nanocrystals
With funding for the TICAL project from the European Research Council, Lecoq established out to devise a new type of scintillator that could more exactly history the situation and timing of situations within just the shower. What I want is a reconstruction of the spatial advancement of the shower and also the time I want to know the dynamics of it.
His answer was to use nanocrystals very small crystals of scintillator materials that are little sufficient for quantum effects to dominate and for a captured particle to emit a a great deal sharper flash of light. By sandwiching slim levels of nanocrystals involving sheets of conventional scintillator, Lecoqs meta-scintillator allows the particle shower to be tracked more precisely.
Meta-scintillators could tremendously strengthen the particle detectors at CERN but that is not the entire story.
For lots of a long time, Lecoq concentrated on PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners, the imaging devices utilised to probe the interior of the human physique, specially for cancer analysis. They rely on detecting gamma rays making use of a great deal the exact same principles as CERNs particle detectors.
I utilised to say that the one hundred-tonne calorimeter, the building of which I was responsible for at the Big Hadron Collider, is absolutely nothing but a gigantic PET scanner, he jokes.
10 picosecond obstacle
At existing, the very best PET scanners can time the arrival of a gamma ray to improved than 500 picoseconds. With the TICAL meta-scintillators finally able of a precision of 10 picoseconds 50 times improved Lecoq envisages upcoming PET scanners ready to generate a great deal sharper photos. They would also call for a great deal a lot less radioactive materials and likely have wider purposes in medicine.
Lecoq is now trying to find sponsors for a Ten picosecond challenge to structure and develop gamma-ray detectors for PET purposes able of this greater time resolution.
TICAL finished at the close of 2018 but Lecoq, retired from CERN, is now co-CEO of Multiwave Metacrystal, a enterprise designed to commercialise the operate of the project. It is environment up a laboratory in collaboration with the Polytechnic College of Valencia to develop meta-scintillators. Initially, they would be for PET scanners whilst they also have opportunity for other industrial and protection purposes.
Lecoq sees the project as a traditional case in point of how European funding can let a wholly insane idea to mature to the stage wherever it can be commercialised for the excellent of society. For me, the ERC grant was wonderful. The European Fee has definitely performed the purpose it should enjoy.
