Medical accelerator project for proton and carbon therapy in Hyogo Prefectural Government

Hyogo Prefectural Government starts building a facility for proton radiation therapy that will also provide carbon therapy. The facility will be completed in 2000. Its output energy can be charged to 230 MeV/u proton beam and to 320 MeV/u carbon beam. In 1995, fundamental design of an accelerator was ordered. In the present plan, five rooms are to be provided for medical treatment. Different beam lines will be equipped in each room, one horizontal, one vertical with horizontal, two gantries, and one 45-degree oblique beam. 50-bed hospital will be built on an adjacent site to accommodate up to more than one thousand patients a year. These medical facilities will be part of the Harima Science Garden City, where Super Photon ring-8 GeV synchrotron radiation facility (SPring-8) is now building, which will be one of the most powerful synchrotron facilities in the world when completed in 1997. In the future, the medical imaging of using the beam of SPring-8 will be possible to diagnose the early cancer, which will be treated by proton or carbon beams without surgery. (author)