LBNL, Berkeley, California
At LBNL in Berkeley, clinical trials were conducted (1975-1992) for treating human cancer using ion beams from the Bevalac and treated about 700 patients with helium-ion and about 300 patients with neon-ion beams.* Clinical trials (1997-2005) at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany used carbon-ion beams to treat about 250 patients. In 1994, NIRS in Chiba, Japan, commissioned its first-in-the-world ion-beam therapy facility, HIMAC, which accelerates ions as heavy as argon nuclei to 800 MeV/nucleon. Following it, several carbon-ion therapy facilities have been, or will be soon, constructed in: Hyogo (2001) and Gunma (2010), Japan; Heidelberg (2009), Marburg (2010) and Kiel (2012), Germany; Pavia (2010), Italy; Lyon (2013), France; Wiener Neustadt (2013), Austria; Shanghai and Lanzhou, China; and Minnesota and California, USA. Technical specifications of these facilities are: ion sources delivering all ion species from proton to carbon, accelerator energy of 430 MeV/n (30-cm range in tissue), beam intensity of about 109 pps (to deliver 1 Gy/min into 1-liter volume), repetition rate of about 0.5 Hz with long spill (for beam scanning), and treatment beam delivery and patient safety systems.
* Castro, JR, "Future research strategy for heavy ion radiotherapy," in Progress in Radio-Oncology (ed. Kogelnik, H.D.), Monduzzi Editore, Italy, 643-648 (1995).
THALES, Colombes
CEA, Arpajon
CLIO/ELISE/LCP, Orsay
Inverse Compton scattering is a well-known process to produce X-rays. Thanks to recent progress in accelerators and laser field, such sources have been developed worldwide. The ELSA linear electron accelerator (CEA DAM DIF, Arpajon, France) just developed its own source. The 17 MeV electron beam interacts with a 532 nm laser to provide a pulsed 10 keV X-ray source. The X-ray beam profile is observed on radio-luminescent imaging plates. In order to increase the signal to noise ratio of this X-ray source, laser developments are in progress.
HMI, Berlin
Charite, Berlin
HZB, Berlin
The ion beam laboratory ISL at the Hahn-Meitner-Institute (HMI) Berlin supplied light and heavy ion beams for research and applications in solid state physics, industry, and medicine. Since 1998, eye tumours are treated with 68 MeV protons in collaboration with the University Hospital Benjamin Franklin, now Charité - Campus Benjamin Franklin. In autumn 2004 the board of directors of the HMI decided to close down ISL at the end of 2006. In December 2006, a cooperation contract between the Charité and the HMI was signed to assure the continuity of the eye tumour therapy, at the moment the only facility in Germany. The accelerator operation will be continued with reduced man-power, requiring changes in the set-up of the accelerators. A new, facile injector for protons is foreseen. Increasing the reliability will be a key issue. The last two years of operation of ISL as a full multi-purpose accelerator will be shown and examples of the research work will be demonstrated. The conversion of a multi-ion, variable energy accelerator to a dedicated accelerator for eye tumour therapy will be discussed.
The Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie has been formed by the merger of the Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin and the Berliner Elektronenspeicherring-Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung
GSI, Darmstadt
INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
CNAO Foundation, Milan
INFN/LNL, Legnaro (PD)
The Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) presently under commissioning in Pavia, Italy, will be the first Italian facility for the treatment of deeply seated tumours with proton and carbon ion beams. The CNAO accelerator comprises a 7 MeV/u injector linac and a 400 MeV/u synchrotron. The 216.8 MHz linac is a copy of the linac at the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Centre (HIT) and consists of a 400 keV/u 4-rod type RFQ and of a 20 MV IH type drift tube linac. In 2004, a collaboration between CNAO and GSI was established for construction and commissioning of the linac. GSI supervised the manufacturing of the linac and of its technical systems, performed copper-plating, assembly, and tuning (together with IAP Frankfurt), and delivered complete beam diagnostics systems. The RFQ was tested at GSI with proton beams together with the BD systems prior to delivery to CNAO. Installation and commissioning in Pavia were performed in collaboration by CNAO, GSI, and INFN. RFQ and thereafter IH linac were successfully commissioned in two steps in 2009, both with (H3)+ and carbon ion beams. The results of the linac commissioning will be reported as well as a comparison to the HIT linac.
Siemens Med, Erlangen
Siemens DK, Jyllinge
FRIB, East Lansing, Michigan
Siemens has earned three contracts to deliver IONTRIS Particle Therapy accelerator systems* to be operated in Marburg and Kiel, both in Germany, and in Shanghai, China. The accelerator part consists of an injector (7 MeV/u protons and light ions) and a compact synchrotron able to accelerate proton beams up to 250 MeV and carbon ions up to 430 MeV/u. These beams can be slowly extracted and delivered to a choice of fixed-angle horizontal, semi-vertical and vertical beam-ports. An overview of the design will be given and the status of the installation and commissioning work for the first two projects will be shown.
*Particle Therapy is a work in progress and requires country-specific regulatory approval prior to clinical use.
HIT, Heidelberg
Since November, 15th 2009 patients are treated with protons and carbon ions at the Heidelberg Ionbeam Therapy Centre (HIT). The facility - two ion sources, an injector linac and a compact synchrotron - is operated in 24/7-mode with high availability. The HIT beam time schedule is discussed along the statistics automatically generated by the control system. Besides the patient treatment in the first horizontal room beam time is also used to develop enhanced treatment software in the second horizontal room as well as for commissioning the gantry place. Additionally, biophysics studies are served at a separate experimental place. In parallel, an upgrade program for the accelerator is under way: at first a test bench for a third ion source, later on dedicated to He beams, will be used to study several ideas to increase the injector performance. Furthermore operation mechanisms are under progress to control directly the synchrotron dipole and quadrupole fields as well as to regulate the spill structure - the aim of both developments is to form a uniform and extremely stable extracted beam with high duty cycle. An overview on this entire accelerator R&D at HIT will be given.
NIRS, Chiba-shi
Construction of new treatment facility as an extension of the existing HIMAC facility, in which all treatment room will be equipped with a 3D pencil beam scanning system, is in progress at NIRS. The challenge of this project is to realize treatment of a moving target by scanning irradiation, because pencil beam scanning is more sensitive to organ motions compared with the conventional broad-beam irradiation. To accomplish practical moving target irradiation, a prototype of the scanning irradiation system was constructed and installed into existing HIMAC physics experiment course. One of the most important features of the system to be tested is fast scanning toward moving target irradiation with a relatively large number of rescannings within an acceptable irradiation time. Commissioning of the prototype is successfully in progress cooperating with highly stabilized beam provided by the HIMAC accelerator complex. We will report the design of the system and the status of the beam study.
NIRS, Chiba-shi
AEC, Chiba
Tumor therapy using energetic carbon ions, as provided by the HIMAC, has been performed since June 1994, and more than 5000 patients were treated until now. With the successful clinical results over more than ten years, we are constructing a new treatment facility. The new facility would have three treatment rooms; two of them have both horizontal and vertical fixed-irradiation-ports, and the other has a rotating-gantry-port. For all the ports, a scanning irradiation method is applied. The new facility is constructed in conjunction with the HIMAC, and heavy-ion beams will be provided by the HIMAC accelerators. To fulfill requirements for the scanning irradiation, we proposed multiple-energy operation with the quasi-DC extension of a flat top. With this operation, the beam energy can be successively varied within a single synchrotron-cycle, and therefore no energy degrader or the range shifter is required. The beam acceleration and extraction tests of the multiple-energy operation were successfully made. We will present the development of this operation as well as results of the beam acceleration tests.
UTNL, Ibaraki
The University of Tokyo, Nuclear Professional School, Ibaraki-ken
University of Tokyo, Tokyo
Akita National College of Technology, Akita
We are developing an X-band linac system for monochromatic X-rays source. The monochromatic X-ray is obtained by Compton scattering. Our system has an X-band (11.424 GHz) 3.5-cell thermionic cathode RF gun, traversing wave accelerating tube and a Q-switch Nd:YAG laser with a wavelength of 532 nm. We adopt a laser pulse circulation system. The RF gun can generate multi-bunch electron beam. We aim to generate 1 μs maximum energy electron beam and collide it to circulated laser pulse. I will present a current status of beam measurement of this linac.
Hitachi, Ltd., Energy and Environmental System Laboratory, Hitachi-shi
A compact and high-proton-yield 2.45 GHz microwave ion source has been developed and tested on an AccSys Model PL-7 linac. The source that has an overall diameter of 115 mm uses permanent magnets and iron yokes. Microwave power was fed to a plasma chamber with a double ridged waveguide via a coaxial cable. A pulsed hydrogen ion beam of 45 mA was extracted from a single 5 mm diameter extraction aperture with a proton fraction of >90 % at 30 keV and a hydrogen gas flow rate of 1 sccm. A 7-MeV proton current out of the linac with the source reached up to 16 mApeak, which exceeds its design value of 15 mApeak. Excellent stability of no more than 1.5 % in both the ion source extraction current and the linac output current was also demonstrated in an 8-hour operation test.
JAEA, Ibaraki-ken
Toshiba, Tokyo
JAEA/Kansai, Kyoto
Kyoto ICR, Uji, Kyoto
NIRS, Chiba-shi
The interaction between the high intensity laser and the solid target produces a strong electrostatic proton acceleration field (1 TV/m) with extraordinary small size, contributing to downsizing of the particle accelerator. The proton beam exhibits significant features. having very small source size(~10 um), short pulse duration (~ps) and very low transverse emittance. However it is a diverging beam (half angle of ~10 deg) with wide energy spread of ~100 %. Because of these peculiar characteristics the proton beam attracts many fields for applications including medical applications. To preserve these peculiar characteristics, which are not possessed by those beams from the conventional accelerators, towards the irradiation points, we need to establish a peculiar beam transport line. As the first step, here we report the demonstration of the proto-type laser-driven proton medical accelerator beam line in which we combine the laser-driven proton source with the beam transport technique already established in the conventional accelerator for the purpose of comparison between the data and the particle transport simulation code, PARMILA*.
*Harunori Takeda, 2005, Parmila LANL (LA-UR-98-4478).
JAEA, Ibaraki-ken
We report the demonstrated irradiation effect of laser-accelerated protons on human cancer cells. In-vitro (living) A549 cells are irradiated with a proton beam having a single bunch duration of 20 ns and a beam flux of ~1014cm−2s−1*. The dynamics differ by seven orders of magnitude to the case of a typical Ion Beam Therapy (IBT) operation with a synchrotron: 0.4 s in bunch duration and ~107cm−2s−1 in beam flux. We have measured the yield of DNA double-strand break with phosphorylated histone H2AX immunostaining method and estimated Relative Biological Effectiveness (RBE) of the laser-accelerated protons.
* A. Yogo et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 181502 (2009).
JAEA, Kyoto
KEK, Ibaraki
RIST, Ibaraki
The concept of a compact ion particle accelerator has become attractive in view of recent progress in laser-driven hadrons acceleration. The Photo Medical Research Centre (PMRC) of JAEA was established to address the challenge of laser-driven ion accelerator development for hadrons therapeutic. In the development of the instrument, it is necessary to do the bench-mark of the amount of the different types of radiation by the simulation code for shielding. The Monte Carlo Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code (PHITS) was used for bench-mark the dose on laser-shot radiations of short duration. The code predicts reasonably well the observed total dose as measured with a glass dosimeter in the laser-driven radiations.
TUB, Beijing
Tsinghua University, Beijing
The method of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is increasingly concerned by the medical world in recent years. Based on the performance characteristic of IMRT accelerator, a 6MeV S-band on axis-coupled SW, Suitable for IMRT, electron linear accelerating tube has been developed in Accelerator Lab of Tsinghua University. This paper provides the design performance characteristics of the tube and the results of the high-power tests,analyzes the performance and problems in the operation.
TUB, Beijing
In this paper, the design of a C-band SW accelerating tube is presented and its high power test set is shown. The tube can accelerate electrons to 9 MeV or 6 MeV. Its length is about 620mm, and a Pierce electron gun is used. A 2.5MW pulsed magnetron at 5712 MHz is served as the tube's RF power source. Two energy modes are performed by changing the input RF power and the injecting voltage of electron gun.
KAERI, Daejon
Proton therapy has features of minimal effect on tumor surrounding healthy tissue and huge damage on tumor volumes specifically. Due to these characteristics of proton therapy the number of patients with receiving proton therapy is increasing every year. Proton therapy is useful for tumor treatment but still not know mechanism of proton beam that how to kill the tumor cells. In korea, a lot of current research progressed at the cellular level by using a proton accelerator, the animal experiments was not held virtually because of the absence of the device. In this study, we installed a animal experiment device for proton beam irradiation in MC-50 cyclotron LEPT (Low Energy Proton Therapy) beam line. Bouls and collimator, we easily made to be installed and we used PMMA sheet in order to reduce the energy. In addition, we used ridge filter type modulator for making SOBP and depth-dose measurement system for a proton beam dosimetry.
SNU, Seoul
NCC, Korea, Kyonggi
Chung-Ang University, Seoul
Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) using a cyclotron has been studied because the system can be more compact and economical compared to the widespread commercial Tandem AMS. However, the previous efforts to build such a system showed that it has weakness in stability and transmission efficiency. To increase transmission efficiency it is important for the injection system to match not only the transverse phase space of a beam but also the longitudinal phase space with cyclotron acceptance. We plan to adopt a sawtooth RF buncher to increase transmission efficiency in the acceleration region of the cyclotron and a radial injection beam line. A goal in designing the injection line is to minimize the number of beam line elements to keep the system compact. The design of the injection system was carried out using the codes such as TRANSPORT and TRACE-3D. A prototype of the injection system is being constructed, and some results will be presented.
CERN, Geneva
EBG MedAustron, Wr. Neustadt
MedAustron is a synchrotron based accelerator facility for cancer treatment in Austria currently in the development phase. The design is based on the PIMMS study* and CNAO** synchrotron. In addition to the clinical application, the accelerator will also provide beams for nonclinical research in the fields of medical radiation physics, radiation biology and experimental physics with an extended proton energy range beyond medical requirements to 800 MeV. The differences to others medical accelerator-based facilities will be elaborated, specifically the used source technologies and configuration (starting up with protons (p) and carbon ions (C6+) allowing a later upgrade to ion species up to neon) and the online verification of all relevant beam parameters. The current project status is presented.
* PIMMS Proton-ion medical machine study, Bryant, Philip J (ed.) et al., CERN, 2000.
** CNAO, www.cnao.it
JAI, Oxford
Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, London
UMAN, Manchester
STFC/DL/ASTeC, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire
STFC/DL, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire
STFC/RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon
Brunel University, Middlesex
STFC/RAL/ASTeC, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon
GIROB, Oxford
Fermilab, Batavia
Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, Oxford
Cockcroft Institute, Lancaster University, Lancaster
The status of PAMELA (Particle Accelerator for MEdicaL Applications) ' an accelerator for proton and light ion therapy using a non-scaling FFAG (ns-FFAG) accelerator ' is reviewed and discussed.
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
Shortages of 99Mo, the most commonly used diagnostic medical isotope, have caused great concern and have prompted numerous suggestions for alternate production methods. A wide variety of accelerator-based approaches have been suggested. In this paper we survey and compare the various accelerator-based approaches.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
There is a dramatic increase in number of proton/carbon cancer therapy facilities in recent years due to their clear advantage over other radiation therapy treatments. The cost of ion cancer therapy is still prohibitive for most of the hospitals, and the dominant costs are beam delivery systems. We previously presented designs of carbon and proton isocentric gantries using non-scaling alternating gradient fixed field magnets (NS-FFAG) *, where gantry magnet size and weight are dramatically reduced. The weight of the transport elements of our NS-FFAG carbon isocentric gantry is 1.5 tons compared to 130 ton gantries recently constructed Heidelberg C facility at Heidelberg. We have also designed a proton NS-FFAG permanent magnet gantry with an estimated weight of 500 kg. We present an update on these designs.
* D. Trbojevic, B. Parker, E. Keil, and A. M. Sessler,
"Carbon/proton therapy: A novel gantry design," PHYSICAL REVIEW SPEC.
TOP. - ACCELERATORS AND BEAMS 10, 053503 (2007).
CNAO Foundation, Milan
The National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO) will be the first Italian facility for the treatment of deep located tumours with proton and carbon ion beams and active scanning technique. The accelerator complex consists of an injection system, a synchrotron and 5 extraction lines. By the end of 2009 the ECR sources, Low Energy Transfer Line (LEBT), RFQ and LINAC where fully commissioned; in December injection and first turns in the synchrotron were also successfully achieved. Full installation of machine and extraction lines was completed in early 2010. The recent advances in the commissioning and performance of the CNAO complex are being reported in this contribution.
JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region
This presentation will describe the accelerators - basic facilities at JINR and briefly discuss research programs for applications and basic research, which are performed at these accelerators.
NIRS, Chiba-shi
AEC, Chiba
Based on more than ten years of experience of the carbon cancer therapy with HIMAC, we have proposed a new treatment facility for the further development of the therapy with HIMAC. This facility will consist of three treatment rooms: two rooms equipped with horizontal and vertical beam-delivery systems and one room with a rotating gantry. For the beam-delivery system of the new treatment facility, a 3D hybrid raster-scanning method with gated irradiation with patient's respiration has been proposed. A R&D study has been carried out toward the practical use of the proposed method. In the R&D study, we have improved the beam control of the size, the position and the time structure for the proposed scanning method with the irradiation gated with patient's respiration. Further, owing to the intensity upgrade of the HIMAC synchrotron, we can successfully extend the flattop duration, which can complete one fractional irradiation with one operation period. The building construction of the new treatment facility will be completed at March 2010 and treatment of 1st patient is scheduled at March 2011. We will report the recent progress on the new treatment facility project at HIMAC.