Compact accelerator for medical therapy
AssigneeLawrence Livermore National Security, LLC
InventorsGeorge J. Caporaso, Yu-Jiuan Chen, Steven A. Hawkins, Stephen E. Sampayan, Arthur C. Paul
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Abstract
A compact accelerator system having an integrated particle generator-linear accelerator with a compact, small-scale construction capable of producing an energetic (˜70-250 MeV) proton beam or other nuclei and transporting the beam direction to a medical therapy patient without the need for bending magnets or other hardware often required for remote beam transport. The integrated particle generator-accelerator is actuable as a unitary body on a support structure to enable scanning of a particle beam by direction actuation of the particle generator-accelerator.
Claims29
A compact accelerator system comprising:
- a support structure;
- an integrated particle generator-accelerator actuably mounted on the support structure, comprising:
- a compact linear accelerator having at least one transmission line(s) extending toward a transverse acceleration axis;
- and a charged particle generator connected to the compact linear accelerator for producing and injecting a charged particle beam into the compact linear accelerator along the acceleration axis;
- switch means connectable to a high voltage potential for propagating at least one electrical wavefront(s) through the transmission line(s) of the compact linear accelerator to impress a pulsed gradient along the acceleration axis which imparts energy to the injected beam;
- and
- means for actuating the integrated particle generator-accelerator to control the pointing direction of the energized beam and the position of the beamspot produced thereby;
- wherein the means for actuating the integrated particle generator-accelerator comprises at least one actuator mechanism capable of effecting displacement of the integrated particle generator-accelerator, and a system controller for controlling the actuator mechanism.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.