Magnetically scanned ion beams for radiation therapy

The advantageous physical characteristics of slowing-down and stopping charged particle ion beams have been demonstrated to be highly desirable for application to radiation therapy. Specifically, the prospect of concentrating the dose delivered into a sharply-defined treatment volume while keeping to a minimum the total dose to tissues outside this volume is most appealing, offering very significant improvements over what is possible with established radiation therapy techniques. The key to achieving this physical dose distribution in an actual treatment setting is the technique used for delivering the beam into the patient. Magnetically scanned beams are emerging as the technique of choice, but daunting problems remain still in achieving the utmost theoretically possible dose distributions. (orig.)