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Proton centres are built around one of three accelerators, a cyclotron, a synchrotron or a compact synchrocyclotron, feeding one or several treatment rooms through magnets and a rotating gantry the size of a house. Single-room systems have cut the price of entry, and upright treatment chairs may shrink the building again.
The first hospital-based proton centre opened at Loma Linda in 1990 with a synchrotron. Since then the industry has split into designs. Isochronous cyclotrons (IBA Proteus PLUS, Varian ProBeam) produce a continuous beam at a fixed energy that a degrader lowers for shallower targets, giving high dose rates but some neutron production and activation. Synchrotrons (Hitachi PROBEAT, ProTom Radiance 330, and the Japanese vendors) accelerate pulses to exactly the energy needed with no degrader, at lower intensity. Superconducting synchrocyclotrons small enough to mount on the gantry itself (Mevion S250i) or feed one room (IBA ProteusONE) created the single-room centre, which costs a fraction of a multi-room facility and is how most new centres are now built. Nearly all systems deliver pencil-beam scanning for intensity-modulated proton therapy, with cone-beam CT or in-room CT for image guidance, and vendors are adding proton arc delivery and ultra-high dose-rate FLASH modes. Upright positioning systems from Leo Cancer Care and P-Cure rotate the seated patient in front of a fixed beam, removing the gantry.
PTCOG lists more than a hundred centres in operation worldwide, concentrated in the United States, Japan, Europe and China; several countries have one national facility and most of the world has none. The clinical case rests on the absence of exit dose: firm for children, skull base and spine tumours, eye melanoma and re-irradiation, and still being tested in randomised trials for common adult cancers.
A cyclotron, synchrotron or synchrocyclotron accelerates protons to therapeutic energies; beam-transport magnets and a rotating gantry or fixed beamline deliver a scanned pencil beam whose Bragg peak stops in the target with no exit dose.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems" OR ABSTRACT:"Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, not a curated reading list.
Shares Samsung Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Apollo Hospitals (Apollo Cancer Centres), Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, C-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others) and the tag machines-wave.
Shares C-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others), Heidelberg University Hospital / NCT / DKFZ, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Medulloblastoma and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Radiotherapy access and the global machine gap, C-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others), Varian (Siemens Healthineers), Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Radiotherapy access and the global machine gap, Varian (Siemens Healthineers), Oesophageal cancer, Breast cancer (all types) and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University, Heidelberg University Hospital / NCT / DKFZ, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Varian (Siemens Healthineers), Breast cancer (all types), Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares C-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others), Brain and spinal cord tumours (all types) and the tag machines-wave.