Proton therapy, where protons are used to irradiate tumors, is increasingly used to treat cancer.
The main advantage of proton therapy over the more common photon therapy is less harmful impact on the surrounding healthy tissue.
Cosylab is one of the companies which develop software for proton therapy.
To demonstrate the operation of devices for proton therapy the company made a model of a proton therapy device.
As part of this master's thesis, a control panel is added to the model, with which the user controls the proton therapy.
This makes the operation of the model more in line with a real device for proton therapy.
The control panel is an integral part of the proton therapy system, with which it communicates via an optical connection using a custom protocol.
The model does not support communication using optical connection, so a different communication interface is needed.
In this thesis, the control panel and the model are connected in two ways.
In the first case, a separate hardware interface is added between the devices.
This interface communicates with the model on one side, and on the other side with the control panel via an optical connection.
In the second case, the control panel is modified in such a way that communication with the model can be performed without a separate interface.
As part of the thesis, we develop software and firmware for the interface between the control panel and the model.
We also modify the firmware of the control panel, and add software with which the control panel communicates directly with the model.
Finally, we check the correct operation of these implementations, and present some options for upgrading our solution and model.
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