Progress in charged particle therapy / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

Charged particle therapy offers a better effect and obvious dosimetric and biological advantages over conventional radiotherapy in tumor control.Charged particles form Bragg peak in the dose distribution in tissue, enable most of energy to be deposited in the target region, and thus enhance tumor control and reduce the damage to normal tissues surrounding the tumor.With the increasing demand for charged particle therapy and the advances in particle accelerator, particle therapy technology is developing rapidly.The core apparatus of particle therapy facility is particle accelerator, and the accelerator type, particle type, and implementation technique determine the performance and therapeutic effect of the facility.This article provides a detailed comparative analysis of various particle therapies.Statistical data show that proton therapy is dominant in particle therapy, and high construction difficulty, large facility size, and extremely high cost have limited the development of heavy ion therapy.Nowadays, there are still some technical problems regarding charged particle therapy, and more clinical trials are required.

The first private-hospital based proton therapy center in Korea; status of the Proton Therapy Center at Samsung Medical Center

PURPOSE: The purpose of this report is to describe the proton therapy system at Samsung Medical Center (SMC-PTS) including the proton beam generator, irradiation system, patient positioning system, patient position verification system, respiratory gating system, and operating and safety control system, and review the current status of the SMC-PTS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The SMC-PTS has a cyclotron (230 MeV) and two treatment rooms: one treatment room is equipped with a multi-purpose nozzle and the other treatment room is equipped with a dedicated pencil beam scanning nozzle. The proton beam generator including the cyclotron and the energy selection system can lower the energy of protons down to 70 MeV from the maximum 230 MeV. RESULTS: The multi-purpose nozzle can deliver both wobbling proton beam and active scanning proton beam, and a multi-leaf collimator has been installed in the downstream of the nozzle. The dedicated scanning nozzle can deliver active scanning proton beam with a helium gas filled pipe minimizing unnecessary interactions with the air in the beam path. The equipment was provided by Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd., RayStation from RaySearch Laboratories AB is the selected treatment planning system, and data management will be handled by the MOSAIQ system from Elekta AB. CONCLUSION: The SMC-PTS located in Seoul, Korea, is scheduled to begin treating cancer patients in 2015.