Australian proton therapy facilities - status report

Full text: Radiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of cancer; both in the curative treatment of localised disease and in alleviating symptoms in more advanced disease. Radiotherapy is usually given with megavoltage X-rays which give good penetration at depth and a lower dose on the skin. The aim is to give a high dose to the tumour while keeping the dose to normal tissues as low as possible. While X-rays continue beyond the target volume, protons and other charged particles have a finite range in tissue and this allows the high dose region to closely conform to the tumour, thereby giving the best chance of tumour control with minimum side effects. This is particularly important for small tumours adjacent to critical normal structures. The unmodified Bragg peak is too narrow to be useful but can be spread out to cover the tumour. Protons of energy 70 - 250 MeV are required to achieve the optimal depth in the body. Protons have been used for cancer treatment since 1954 but most of these treatments have been given in physics-based facilities which do not provide an ideal environment for the patient and may have only limited beam time available. A dedicated, hospital based facility was built at Loma Linda in California in 1991 and has now treated over 5,000 patients. Several other centres are being built in the USA, Japan and Europe and one is now being considered for Australia. Early 1998 Hitachi Australia Ltd. was asked to research the possibility of building a facility in Australia to serve Oceania. Two major hospitals showed interest, Royal Brisbane Hospital and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Both hospitals are undergoing redevelopment and have space for a building 3 stories high with a foot-print of approximately 50 m x 50 m. What is proposed for Australia is a principally clinical research facility with a dedicated area for physics research. A Steering Committee will be established to develop a document for presentation to Government. The facility may be funded by a combination of Private Enterprise and Government. This presentation describes the steps taken to date and the proposed 'road map' for the future. Physicists are invited to consider how they would use such a facility. In partnership with Mitsubishi and Toshiba, Hitachi built the rotating gantries for the proton facility at the National Cancer Centre in Kashiwa, Japan. Subsequently, they built the scientific/medical proton facility at Wakasa Bay in Japan. In March 2000 Hitachi will commission a facility at Tsukuba University Hospital dedicated to proton therapy and related basic research