• E. Syresin, D.E. Donets, E.D. Donets, E.E. Donets, V.V. Salnikov, V.B. Shutov
  JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region
• T. Honma, M. Kanazawa, K. Noda
  NIRS, Chiba-shi

The 11C iso­topes are pro­duced in the ni­tro­gen gas tar­get ir­ra­di­at­ed by a pro­ton beam. If the ni­tro­gen tar­get con­tains 5% of hy­dro­gen, about 5·E12 methane molecules can be pro­duced each 20 min­utes. The sep­a­rat­ed methane is load­ed into the ion source. The tech­nique used for for­ma­tion of ra­dioac­tive car­bon beams was de­vel­oped and test­ed in the JINR elec­tron string ion source (ESIS) Kri­on-2. The mea­sured con­ver­sion ef­fi­cien­cy of methane molecules to car­bon ions is rather high; it cor­re­sponds to 17 % for C⁴⁺ ions. The ex­per­i­men­tal­ly ob­tained C⁴⁺ ion in­ten­si­ty in ESIS was about 2·E9 ppp. The new ES­IS-5T is under con­struc­tion in JINR now at pro­ject ion in­ten­si­ty of 6·E9 ppp. Ac­cel­er­at­ed 12C ion beams are ef­fec­tive­ly used for can­cer treat­ment at HIMAC. The positron emis­sion to­mog­ra­phy is the most ef­fec­tive way of tumor di­ag­nos­tics. The in­ten­sive ra­dioac­tive 11C ion beam could allow both these ad­van­tages to be com­bined. It could be used both for can­cer treat­ment and for on-line PET. For­ma­tion of a pri­ma­ry ra­dioac­tive ion beam at an in­ten­si­ty on the tumor tar­get of 1·E8 pps al­lows the can­cer treat­ment by the scan­ning ra­di­a­tion method and on-line dose ver­i­fi­ca­tion.