Description
The localized dose-deposition of particles such as protons provides advantages over conventional radiotherapy via X-rays for the treatment of cancer. To reach tumor layers at different depths within the patient body, the beam energy needs to be varied. The efficiency of delivery systems for particle therapy is limited by the energy layer switching time. This is the time required to ramp the beamline magnets to transport a different energy. The maximum deviations from the design momentum that are delivered correctly determine the momentum acceptance of a beamline. To overcome the bottleneck of energy layer switching and enable new techniques for particle therapy, the University of Melbourne’s TURBO (Technology for Ultra Rapid Beam Operation) project aims to design and demonstrate compact large momentum acceptance beamlines. Towards this goal, two approaches are currently under investigation. A closed-dispersion arc based on non-linear magnets has been developed, which achieves a ±42% acceptance around the central momentum in a beamline with an overall bend of 30°. A low-energy demonstrator for this design is currently under construction in the Pelletron Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. Considering the technological complexity of the non-linear arrays, we present an alternative utilizing available, separate-function magnets. For this new design based on quadrupole-multiplets, we identify parameters that represent clinical beam quality requirements and employ a multi-objective optimization to investigate dependencies between them. We compare the two designs in terms of achievable acceptance and technology readiness and discuss the resulting trade-off in the context of current state of the art techniques in particle therapy.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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