gms | German Medical Science

48th Meeting of the Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group

Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group (PTCOG)

28.09. - 03.10.2009, Heidelberg

Present Status of Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center Proton Facility and Perspective of the Fukui Prefectural Proton Therapy Center

Meeting Abstract

  • K. Kume - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • S. Fukuda - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • S. Fukumoto - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • T. Hasegawa - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • S. Hatori - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • T. Kurita - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • I. Maruyama - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • K. Yamamoto - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan
  • N. Yokohama - Medical Division, Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center, Tsuruga, Japan

PTCOG 48. Meeting of the Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group. Heidelberg, 28.09.-03.10.2009. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2009. Doc09ptcog119

doi: 10.3205/09ptcog119, urn:nbn:de:0183-09ptcog1192

Published: September 24, 2009

© 2009 Kume et al.
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Outline

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Introduction: Proton therapy at the Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center (WERC) has been carried out by using its multi-purpose ion accelerator complex with a tandem and a synchrotron accelerators. An effective machine operation is demanded throughout the whole available beam time, since the beam time is shared by medical and other applications. The present status of the operation is reported at first. Then the perspective of the Fukui Prefectural Proton Therapy Center is reported.

Present status of the Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center Proton Facility: The present proton facility at the Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center (WERC) consists of an accelerator complex and two fixed medical beam lines. The accelerator part has a negative sputtering ion source, a 5 MV tandem injector and a 200 MeV proton synchrotron. Beam is delivered to a patient with a dose rate of approximately 1 Gy/min/nA. Beam intensity for the medical use is at present achieved up to 5 nA with certain quality in time structure of beam itself. A patient positioning system consists of an X-ray CT (CT) , a common couch system with rails between CT and the irradiation port, and a DR system. This positioning system was shown to achieve a positioning precision of 1 mm through clinical treatments. The overall uptime efficiency with WERC system is getting closer to 95 % for the whole clinical period.

There have been 60 patients altogether who have been treated at WERC since June 2002, when an official clinical trial was started. 53 patients among them had been suffered from prostate cancers, while rest had been suffered from liver and lung cancers and were treated with a respiration gating system. In 2008, 6 patients with prostate cancer were treated with 2.5 GyE/fx in 27 fractions, while one liver patient was treated with 4.5 GyE/fx in 16 fractions. For each prostate fraction the iso-center were determined with CT. The therapy at WERC will be terminated in this year since the Fukui Prefectural Proton Therapy Center described below will start to treat patients in the 2010 fiscal year.

Perspective of the Fukui Prefectural Proton Therapy Center: The new Fukui Prefectural Proton Therapy Center will be constructed in the site of Fukui Prefectural Hospital (FPH), where is 60 km apart from WERC. Construction of two rotating gantries and one fixed horizontal port has been carried out with an accelerator system of a duoplasmatron ion source, a RFQ+DTL 7 MeV proton injector and a 250 MeV proton synchrotron. At one of the gantries, both of three dimensional layer stacking irradiation system and the CT positioning system will be adopted. Conventional techniques with wobbling magnets and scatterers will also be used at all of treatment rooms.

This project with an expected upper limit of 100 million USD (10 billion JPY) in overall cost is funded by the Japanese national government to promote the nuclear engineering near FPH and WERC. This facility aims to have 400 new patients every year. The first patient is expected to come in the 2010 fiscal year. A four story building is nearly completed and the installation of rotating gantries are scheduled in this September.

Conclusion: Proton therapy has been carried out with the multi-purpose proton accelerator system at WERC with certain machine stability. A new FPH proton facility will start treatments in coming three years with technical improvements obtained at WERC.