Possible radiography upgrade at Christie Hospital Proton Therapy Centre

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Abstract

Hadron therapy is entering a new stage, in which the number of clinical and research facilities is rapidly increasing, together with number of clinicians looking for more effective cancer treatments. A lot of research is been done to improve the performance of current systems and decrease costs. Some involves developing new technologies, same reviews existing ones. This research was performed as a proposal in addition to Christie Hospital Proton Therapy Centre plans considering upgrades to enable proton imaging. In this research beam delivery options currently available in hadron therapy were first reviewed. It was proposed to extend the energy range from 250 to 330 MeV by adding a linac. A LIBO-like side-coupled linac was designed in collaboration with TERA Foundation. Next step in this research was a gantry design that can deliver both therapeutic and radiographic energies. A seven quadrupole normal conducting isocentric gantry was designed with two 45º bending magnets together with horizontal and vertical scanning magnets placed upstream before the final 90º bend towards the patient. The gantry optimization was performed in the Mad 8 program. Main objectives of the system were met including beam achromaticity, parallel-to-point focusing, 4 mm diameter symmetrical beam spot size and infinite source-to-axis distance. The last part of the project was to review existing proton imaging setups and their feasibility as a Quality Assurance tool.

Keyword(s)

gantry design; proton therapy

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