Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 30
Future Particle Accelerator Developments
for Radiation Therapy
Michael H. Holzscheiter and Niels Bassler
Abstract
During the last decade particle beam cancer therapy has seen a rapid
increase in interest, and several new centers have been built, are currently under
construction, or are in an advanced stage of planning. Typical treatment centers
today consist of an accelerator capable of producing proton or ion beams in an
energy range of interest for medical treatment, i.e. providing a penetration depth in
water of about 30 cm, a beam delivery system to transport the produced beam to
the patient treatment rooms, and several patient stations, allowing for an optimal
usage of the continuously produced beam. This makes these centers rather large
and consequently expensive. Only major hospital centers situated in an area where
they can draw on a population of several million can afford such an installation. In
order to spread the use of particle beam cancer therapy to a broader population base
it will be necessary to scale down the facility size and cost. This can in principle
be done by reducing the number of treatment rooms to one, eliminating the need
of an elaborate beam delivery system, and thereby reducing the building size and
cost. Such a change should be going in parallel with a reduction of the accelerator
itself, and a number of approaches to this are currently being pursued. If successful,
such developments could eventually lead to a compact system where all components
would fit into a single shielded room, not much different in size from a typical
radiation vault for radiotherapy with X-rays.
