Seminars at LNS

The MedAustron Therapy Accelerator Center: recent commissioning achievements and future goals

by Nadia Gambino (Medaustron EBG)

Europe/Rome
Description

MedAustron is a synchrotron-based Particle Therapy Accelerator located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The facility delivers proton beams since 2016 in the range of 62-262 MeV/nucleon and carbon beams in the range of 120-400 MeV/nucleon since July 2019 for cancer treatment. In addition, carbon and proton beams will be provided to a room dedicated to non-clinical research, with protons up to 800 MeV. After the beam generation at the ion sources and pre-acceleration in a LINAC, the beam is injected into a 77 m long synchrotron accelerating the particles up to the requested energy for clinical treatment.  A 3rd-order resonance slow extraction is used to extract particles from the synchrotron in a controlled process and transfer the beam to 4 irradiation rooms with a spill length of 1-10 seconds, to facilitate the control of the delivered dose to the patient.  The medical environment of the accelerator puts strict requirements beam parameters and long-term stability operation of the entire accelerator. Recently, the commissioning of the accelerator with carbon ions from the source to the horizontal beam line of the second irradiation room has been successfully completed.  Carbon and high energy proton commissioning continues for the other beam lines. The installation of a proton Gantry is also currently ongoing. In this talk the MedAustron facility will be presented with a review of the recent commissioning results on carbon ion beams. Further the accelerator status and the future roadmap projects will be presented.