Carbon Ion Therapy Innovations in Dosimetry and Dose Delivery
G Cernica1*, S Mun2, (1) Cure Foundation, Fairfax, VA, (2) Virginia Tech, Arlington, VASU-E-T-283 Sunday 3:00:00 PM - 6:00:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Objective : Carbon ion particle therapy delivers sharp Bragg's peaks, and hence can produce dose delivery of very high precision and conformality. To complement this characteristic, particle therapy centers implement a number of technologies unique to these centers, and are not commonly known to the medical physics community. This work outlines these adopted technologies.
Methods : Particle therapy centers develop technologies to meet the needs of patient safety, dose delivery accuracy, and imaging requirements complementing these state-of-the-art centers. Through the use of literature reviews and publicly available documents, we produced a compilation of some of these innovations, a number of them unique to the centers themselves.
Results : The centers based in Bloomington, USA, Chiba, Japan, Harima Japan, Gunma, Japan, Heidelberg, Germany, and Pavia, Italy were reviewed. Interestingly, 60% of centers reviewed developed in-house innovations to address the needs of particle therapy, and all but one had at least one technology unique to its center. For example, Bloomington's MPRI developed a 3D dosimeter used in particle beam measurement. The patient couch systems implemented in Chiba, Japan and now Gunma, Japan are unique to the centers. Heidelberg's HIT developed the world's first carbon ion gantry. Italy's CNAO has a unique patient positioning system.
Conclusions : Particle therapy centers, despite being at the forefront of technology in delivering radiation to patients, have not widely disclosed treatment delivery strategies and dosimetry techniques, despite the material being potentially useful to the radiotherapy community. This work is an effort in comparing and contrasting these innovations.