Carbon-ion synchrotrons and facilities
Carbon ions are twelve times heavier than protons, so every clinical facility uses a synchrotron ring tens of metres across and fixed or huge rotating beamlines. Only about a dozen centres exist, in Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria, China, South Korea and Taiwan.
Overview
The Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) treated the first carbon-ion patients in 1994 and remains the reference facility. Carbon nuclei need far higher magnetic rigidity than protons at the same depth, so cyclotrons are impractical and each centre is built around a synchrotron with an injector linac, delivering pulses of a chosen energy to fixed horizontal and vertical beamlines or, at Heidelberg and at HIMAC, to a rotating gantry (the HIMAC gantry uses superconducting magnets built by Toshiba). Siemens built the Heidelberg, Marburg and Shanghai facilities before leaving the field; Toshiba supplied Kanagawa, Yamagata, Yonsei in Seoul and others; Hitachi supplied Osaka and Taipei Veterans General Hospital; CNAO in Pavia and MedAustron in Wiener Neustadt were built from CERN and INFN designs. Japan's QST is developing a compact superconducting design it calls the quantum scalpel to shrink the footprint to a hospital room.
Carbon's dense ionisation gives a higher biological effect per gray than photons or protons, which is the argument for radioresistant tumours such as sacral chordoma, adenoid cystic carcinoma, bone and soft-tissue sarcoma, locally advanced pancreatic cancer and some liver and prostate cancers, but the clinical evidence is mostly from single-arm series and the machines cost several times a proton centre.
- Carbon-ion beam (dense ionisation)
- Bragg peak
- No exit dose
How it works
An injector linac and synchrotron accelerate carbon-12 ions to therapeutic energies and deliver them through fixed beamlines or a superconducting gantry; the ions' dense ionisation track raises biological effectiveness at the Bragg peak.
- Higher biological effect for radioresistant tumours
- Sharper lateral fall-off than protons
- Short hypofractionated courses
- About a dozen facilities worldwide
- Several times the cost of a proton centre
- Mostly single-arm evidence
Latest papers
topQuery for this technology: (TITLE:"Carbon-ion synchrotrons and facilities" OR ABSTRACT:"Carbon-ion synchrotrons and facilities") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Carbon-ion synchrotrons and facilities, not a curated reading list.
Similar pages
not linked directly; found by shared links- CompanySumitomo Heavy Industries
Shares Boron neutron capture therapy, Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, Proton therapy and the tag machines-wave.
- CompanyViewRay (MRIdian)
Shares Heidelberg University Hospital / NCT / DKFZ, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
- CompanyProTom International
Shares Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, Proton therapy and the tag machines-wave.
- CompanyAngioDynamics
Shares Hepatocellular carcinoma, Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
- TechnologyTomoTherapy and Radixact (helical radiotherapy)
Shares Heidelberg University Hospital / NCT / DKFZ, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
- TechnologyGamma Knife
Shares Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University and the tag machines-wave.
- TechnologyC-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others)
Shares Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
- TechnologySurgical robots: da Vinci, Hugo, Versius and single-port systems
Shares Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.