Proton linac-based therapy facility for ultra-high dose rate (FLASH) treatment

As an advanced treatment method in the past five years,ultra-high dose rate(FLASH)radiotherapy as a breakthrough and milestone in radiotherapy development has been verified to be much less harmful to healthy tissues in different experiments.FLASH treatments require an instantaneous dose rate as high as hundreds of grays per second to complete the treatment in less than 100 ms.Current proton therapy facilities with the spread-out of the Bragg peak formed by different energy layers,to our knowledge,cannot easily achieve an adequate dose rate for FLASH treatments because the energy layer switch or gantry rotation of current facilities requires a few seconds,which is relatively long.A new design for a therapy facility based on a proton linear accelerator(linac)for FLASH treatment is proposed herein.It is designed under two criteria:no mechanical motion and no magnetic field variation.The new therapy facility can achieve an ultrahigh dose rate of up to 300 Gy/s;however,it delivers an instantaneous dose of 30 Gy within 100 ms to complete a typical FLASH treatment.The design includes a compact proton linac with permanent magnets,a fast beam kicker in both azimuth and elevation angles,a fixed gantry with a static superconducting coil to steer proton bunches with all energy,a fast beam scanner using radio-frequency(RF)deflectors,and a fast low-level RF system.All relevant principles and conceptual proposals are presented herein.

Radio frequency conditioning of an S-band accelerating structure prototype for compact proton therapy facility

The development of a high-gradient accelerating structure is underway to construct a compact proton linear accelerator for cancer treatment.Extensive experiments and numerous studies are being conducted to develop compact linear accelerators for proton therapy.Optimization of the electromagnetic and mechanical design has been performed to simplify the manufacturing process and reduce costs.A novel high-gradient structure with a low relativistic proton velocity(β),v/c=0.38,was designed,fabricated,and tested at high power.The first full-scale prototype was also successfully tested with high radio frequency(RF)power,a repetition rate of 50 Hz,and pulse length of 3μs to reach a high-gradient of 46 MV/m using a 50 MW S-band klystron power supply obtained from the Shanghai Soft X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility.This is the first high-power test in China,which is in line with the expected experimental goal.This study presents preliminary high-power testing of S-band standing wave accelerating structures with 11 cells.This work aims to verify the feasibility of using a high-gradient RF accelerating structure in compact proton therapy facilities.The cold test of the prototype cavity was completed in advance.Details of the high-power RF test setup,the process of RF conditioning,and the high-power results are described.

An S-band solid-state radio frequency power amplifier used at Shanghai soft X-ray FEL facility

In this paper,we present the general design methods and parameter measurements of a 1-k W solidstate radio frequency(RF) power amplifier at 2856 MHz,for the soft X-ray free electron laser facility.Three-stage amplification with a 4-way combination is used.An RF switch module is integrated with the solid-state RF power amplifier to convert the continuous wave(CW) signal into pulse signal,with adjustable pulse width.The power gain is measured at 57.7 d B at 60 d Bm output.The RF phase noise,which is measured by the low-level RF system,is\0.015 degree(RMS),while the pulse frontier jitter is\5 ns.