Current Cancer Therapy Projects

1
Benefits of FFAGs for Proton and Carbon Therapy
Comparison between Accelerator Technologies for
Proton and Ion Therapy
Current FFAGs have excellent properties for
Hadron Therapy but further improvements are still
possible
Current Cancer Therapy Projects
The following projects are under development
using FFAGs
All but the last are in Japan. The last differs
from the others in another respect as well it is
a different type of FFAG. See below
A second type of FFAG
There are two types of FFAG envisaged. All those
built or under construction so far are so-called
"scaling" FFAGs in which the orbits of particles
around the machine are the same, except they
scale with energy. The problem with this is the
magnets required tend to be large and complex,
and hence expensive. This
may hamper their use in medicine and industry.
The second type is a "non-scaling" FFAG, in which
the orbit shapes change as a function of energy.
This allows the apertures of the magnets to be up
to 10 times smaller than for a scaling machine,
making the FFAG much more compact. In addition,
the non-scaling magnets are less complex. Taken
together, these should make a non-scaling machine
considerably cheaper than a scaling machine for
the same performance, bringing a sea change in
accelerator technology.
A magnet for the prototype 150 MeV scaling FFAG
built at KEK. The magnets for a non-scaling FFAG
could have a 10 times smaller aperture, making
them smaller and cheaper.
The orbit shape in scaling FFAG cells is the same
at each energy, but varies with non-scaling
machines. This allows the apertures of the
magnets to be much smaller in the latter,
reducing the cost for the same performance.
However, non-scaling FFAGs have three unique
features which must be investigated before their
wide-spread use can be envisaged. To do this, it
is planned to build an electron model
non-scaling FFAG, the first of this type ever
built, and study these features in detail.
We are seeking collaborators to work with us on
the development of this novel form of accelerator
for proton and carbon ion therapy!