Design and Test Results of Superconducting Magnet for Heavy-Ion Rotating Gantry

Abstract

Heavy-ion radiotherapy has a high curative effect in cancer treatment and also can reduce the burden on patients. These advantages have been generally recognized. Furthermore, a rotating gantry can irradiate a tumor with ions from any direction without changing the position of the patient. This can reduce the physical dose on normal cells, and is thus commonly used in proton radiotherapy. However, because of the high magnetic rigidity of carbon ions, the weight of the rotating gantry for heavy-ion therapy is about three-times heavier than those used for proton cancer therapy, according to our estimation. To overcome this issue, we developed a small and lightweight rotating gantry in collaboration with the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS). The compact rotating gantry was composed of ten low-temperature superconducting (LTS) magnets that were designed from the viewpoint of beam optics. These LTS magnets have a surface-winding coil-structure and provide both dipole and quadrupole fields. The maximum dipole and quadrupole magnetic field of the magnets were 2.88 T and 9.3 T/m, respectively. The rotating gantry was installed at NIRS, and beam commissioning is in progress to achieve the required beam quality. In the three years since 2013, in a project supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), we have been developing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets with the aim of a further size reduction of the rotating gantry. To develop fundamental technologies for designing and fabricating HTS magnets, a model magnet was manufactured. The model magnet was composed of 24 saddle-shaped HTS coils and generated a magnetic field of 1.2 T. In the presentation, recent progress in this research will be reported.