Status of MedAustron – The Austrian Ion Therapy and Research Centre

Abstract

MedAustron is the Austrian center for hadron therapy and non-clinical research. The accelerator design is based on the PIMMS study [1] and features proton beams of up to 800 MeV and carbon ion beams of up to 400 MeV/u. The accelerator is currently being installed and the beam commissioning has started early 2013. The injector comprising three ECR sources, an RFQ and an IH-mode structure has already been qualified; the synchrotron commissioning started in March 2014. Certification of the therapy accelerator following the European Medical Device Directive (MDD) is well under way with strong partners from industry involved in the process. The status of the overall facility including an overview of the recent commissioning results will be presented in this paper. THE MEDAUSTRON ACCELERATOR COMPLEX The beam produced by one of the three ion sources is selected and transported by the low-energy beam transport (LEBT) system to the LINAC. The LINAC consists of a radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ), a matching section and an IH-mode drift-tube LINAC (DTL). The RFQ accelerates the particles to 400 keV/u, the injection energy into the synchrotron of 7 MeV/u is achieved by the DTL. After the LINAC, the particles are conditioned by electron stripping with a thin carbon foil and guided by the medium energy beam transport (MEBT) system to the synchrotron. A multi-turn injection is carried out in order to accumulate the beam in the synchrotron. Subsequently, the beam is captured and accelerated by means of an RF cavity. Extraction of the beam proceeds using a slow extraction scheme at a third order resonance driven by a betatron core. The high energy beam transfer line (HEBT) delivers the extracted beam from the synchrotron to one of the four different irradiation rooms. The main parameters are shown in Table 1. Table 1: MedAustron Main Parameters