Luca Bottura, challenge lead of GaToroid, and Gregory Maury from the TE/MSC-SMT part are engaged on winding a coil of the demonstrator for GaToroid. Credit score: CERN
Hadron remedy is a state-of-the-art radiotherapy method that makes use of proton or ion beams to focus on tumoral cells, whereas sparing surrounding wholesome tissues from undesirable radiation. To realize greatest outcomes, it requires advanced methods, known as gantries, that rotate across the affected person, carrying magnets that information the hadron beams exactly onto tumors. Sadly, these are normally huge and dear machines, which signify a limiting issue for the unfold of the therapy method.
Drawing on its experience in superconducting magnets, a workforce at CERN has developed a novel superconducting and light-weight gantry, GaToroid, which guarantees to be rather more compact than present machines whereas being simply as exact.
In contrast to conventional rotating gantries, GaToroid may ship particle beams from completely different instructions with out requiring the affected person or the magnets to be moved. It exploits compact superconducting coils, positioned at completely different angles across the affected person, to create a steady-state toroidal magnetic subject that may direct particle beams onto a tumor from any path, sparing the affected person from any stray magnetic subject.
Using superconductors offers the GaToroid design its distinctive compactness, with a diameter of 5 meters and an estimated weight of roughly 12 metric tons for proton beams. This represents a considerable weight discount in comparison with conventional gantries for proton purposes, which might weigh as much as 270 metric tons.
In 2023, the workforce constructed and examined a demonstrator magnet consisting of 1 coil for the proton model of GaToroid, scaled right down to one-third of the true dimension. The objective of the demonstrator was to show the mechanical resistance of the construction and to examine the standard of the sector. The superconductor of alternative was niobium–titanium, the identical materials used for the cables of the LHC magnets.
“The tests we ran with our GaToroid demonstrator were highly successful, showing excellent performance and demonstrating that this magnet technology is ready for this type of application,” says Luca Bottura, head of the challenge.
The workforce carried out a number of assessments on the magnet and picked up exact measurements of the magnetic subject profile. “The magnet generated a field that matched the expected one with an error of less than 1%, and it showed absolutely no signs of mechanical degradation following the powering tests,” explains Gianluca Vernassa, who carried out the mechanical and electromagnetic calculations on the demonstrator magnet.
This revolutionary design has already garnered vital consideration throughout the particle remedy neighborhood throughout Europe. Notably, PARTREC has expressed curiosity in collaborating with the workforce to discover how GaToroid could possibly be tailored for FLASH remedy.
In contrast to in conventional radiotherapy, the place therapy doses are delivered sequentially from completely different instructions with lengthy pauses to regulate the rotating gantry, FLASH radiotherapy delivers your complete dose from all instructions concurrently inside 100 milliseconds.
Whereas standard rotating gantries can’t function on this mode on account of their inherent limitations, the GaToroid system, with its fastened construction and skill to ship beams from a number of angles with out mechanical changes, could be completely suited to one of these therapy. This makes GaToroid a possible enabling expertise for using hadrons in FLASH radiotherapy, which has not been potential with present methods.
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GaToroid: Getting nearer to reasonably priced most cancers hadron remedy (2025, January 20)
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