Establishment of a beam line at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for proton radiography.

A proton beam is extracted from the 200-MeV linear accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to investigate the efficacy of proton radiography in medical diagnosis. Fluence rates from 2 X 10(3) to 2 X 10(5) protons/cm2s over a 28-cm diameter field are obtained with a full width at half-maximum beam-energy spread of less than 3.61 MeV. The system is designed to radiography most parts of the human body, including the head, with high-speed screen-film as the imaging medium. Beam extraction and test results along with the medical implications of the beam quality are reported.