Acoustic Range Estimates

Acoustic Range Estimates (ARE), LLC is a small, spin-off company created to develop acoustic techniques for range verification during proton therapy. No commercial system provides a feedback loop confirming that proton therapy has been delivered accurately. Patients’ skeletal structures are aligned with millimeter precision, but soft tissue moves from day to day, and sometimes during a treatment session. For instance, bowel gas shifts between treatment sessions as the patient digests, and can even move while beam is being delivered. For abdominal tumors, therapists fly blind and can easily deliver an entire daily treatment incorrectly. Therefore, proton therapy is underutilized for abdominal tumors. A range verification solution will increase the number of tumor sites for which proton therapy is justified. ARE is partially supported by Phase II SBIR funding to translate thermoacoustic range verification during particle therapy from a research project conducted at DOE labs to clinical use in proton therapy centers. Therefore, ARE's FCOI policy is available https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0p12twe7qujv1w/FCOI7Jul23.pdf?dl=0