ASTER: Imaging with antiprotons

Antiprotons are of great promise in biomedical research and in practical biomedical and industrial applications. It is likely that antiprotons will be of far greater utility in the next century than x-rays have been in this century. Antiprotonic STEReography (ASTER), a 3-D photography-like imaging technique, is basic to most of the foreseen applications. This dissertation explores realistic models of ASTER analytically, numerically, and with computer simulations. It carries the understanding of ASTER further than previous work, and its models are adaptable to more powerful computers. In particular, ASTER is portrayed as a robust alternative to the ambiguities inherent in the imaging techniques used in x-ray computer tomography, CT. The scattering of the antiprotons lateral to their initial direction is the limiting factor in ASTERs ability to resolve fine anatomical details. This lateral scattering is calculated with a mathematical term ignored in previous studies, which overestimate the scattering of heavy charged particles in homogeneous media. Optimization techniques are explored and found to provide twice the resolution for a given radiation dose, and to reduce the needed detector size. Proper choice of orientation of the antiproton beam is shown to improve the resolution/dose ratio by an order of magnitude. Comparison of simulated ASTER scans with actual CT scans shows that ASTER imparts about one to two orders of magnitude less dose than that imparted by CT at comparable resolutions. The scanned targets include a random pattern. The target and the image are shown to be more correlated as the number of antiprotons used is increased. Finally, the future of ASTER is considered: further computer simulations are suggested, and implications for medicine and industry are discussed