Toshiba (TYO:6502) said today that it, along with Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology have developed a novel pencil beaming scanning system which they claim significantly reduces the size of the system without lowered performance.
The company said that the newly designed system can be mounted on a rotating gantry with superconducing beam bending magnets, which will lead to further downsizing and weight reductions.
Toshiba said it will release more details of the device this week at the 56th Annual COnference of the Particle Therapy Co-operation group in Yokohama.
“Toshiba has already led the way in applying advanced expertise in superconductivity to downsizing the rotating gantry, but we recognized that even further size reduction is necessary for wider adoption of heavy-ion therapy systems. With our colleagues at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, we have now realized a rotating gantry that is more affordable for customers around the world. I am happy that the fusion of QST-NIRS’ world-class clinical knowledge in heavy-ion therapy and Toshiba’s wide-ranging industrial technologies is opening up highly promising new possibilities in cancer treatment,” Toshiba corp new technology project engineering dept. senior manager Yutaka Hirata said in a prepared statement.
The new system is designed to optimize the performance of the systems’ electromangets by tapering their shape for a wider duct at the downstream end. Toshiba claims that the tapering ensures the spread of the carbon-ion beam to create a pencil beam and effective achievement of the irradiation field.
“The QST-NIRS-Toshiba collaboration team has successfully developed a state-of-the-art scanning irradiation system. This development substantially downsizes the system while keeping its performance. I believe that, thanks to this novel device, each and every heavy-ion therapy facility will be able to have a rotating gantry, making it the de facto standard. I need to emphasize that this technology is also applicable to proton therapy systems. This technology is a breakthrough for particle therapy,” QST-NIRS advanced particle therapy system research team lead Dr. Takuji Furukawa said in a press release.
