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Background: The potential survival benefits of adding radiotherapy to systemic therapy for esophageal cancer patients with oligometastases are unknown.Methods: In this retrospective analysis, patients with stage IV esophageal cancer (according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer Seventh edition staging system) with

We report the progress of an R&D project of fundamental technologies for cryocooler-cooled accelerator magnets using coated conductors funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency under its S-Innovation Program. Its target applications include carbon cancer therapy and accelerator-driven subcritical reactor. We have been carrying out design studies of HTS magnets for spiral sector fixed-field alternating gradient accelerators to show their feasibility for the target applications and to clarify the requirements of winding technologies. A three-dimensional winding machine has been developed to fabricate a model magnet in which winding technologies required for the designed magnet are implemented. With respect to the large magnetization of coated conductors, which is one of the big concerns on their uses in accelerator magnets, the magnetic field measurements using rotating pick-up coils have been made to clarify its influence on the multipole components of the magnetic field. A method for numerical electromagnetic field analyses of coils with three-dimensional shapes has been developed to predict the influence of magnetization on the field quality of magnets.

Carbon ion cancer therapy is becoming more widespread due to its high curative effects and low burden on patients. In particle cancer therapy, it is desirable that the treatment beam irradiates the tumor from different directions in order to reduce the dose on normal cells. A rotating gantry is a suitable apparatus for meeting this requirement. Since the irradiation device orbits a patient inside the gantry, the beam can irradiate the tumor from any direction without changing the posture of the patient. Rotating gantries are already commonly used for proton cancer therapy. On the other hand, those designed for carbon ion cancer therapy have not yet been adopted because they are too large and heavy for installation in general hospitals. An R&D project to reduce the size of a rotating gantry for carbon ion cancer therapy by applying high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets is now in progress. It is difficult to use a coolant for the magnets mounted on the rotating gantry because they are rotating. Therefore, conduction cooling should be employed. On the other hand, the magnetic field generated by the magnets of the rotating gantry should be changed depending on the energy of the carbon ion beam in raster-scanning irradiation, and there is some possibility that the carbon ion beam will collide with the coils. This causes anomalous thermal inputs, such as those due to ac loss and beam loss, resulting in the problem of poor thermal stability of the conduction-cooled HTS coils heated by such thermal inputs. Therefore, it is important to estimate the thermal stability of the conduction-cooled HTS coils correctly. In this paper, a saddle-shaped HTS coil was designed, and the thermal runaway current of the HTS coil was numerically simulated.

Because of its high curative effects and low burden on patients, carbon ion cancer therapy is becoming more widely used. The accelerated carbon ions are delivered to patients via electromagnets on a rotating gantry. One advantage of a rotating gantry is that a tumor can be irradiated with carbon ions from any direction without changing the posture of the patient. On the other hand, because of the high magnetic rigidity of carbon ions, rotating gantries for carbon cancer therapy are about three times heavier than those for proton cancer therapy, according to our estimation. Use of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets has been considered for reducing the size of the rotating gantry for carbon cancer therapy. For accurate irradiation, these HTS magnets must generate high-uniformity magnetic fields, and the shape of the HTS coils was designed by 3-D analysis to generate uniform magnetic fields. In our design, saddle-shaped HTS coils were used since they can efficiently generate a magnetic field. The conductor positions and the coil end shape were optimized to generate a uniform magnetic field. On the other hand, it was difficult to maintain the HTS conductor in the designed saddle shape because it has a tapelike shape and anisotropic flexibility in bending. In this paper, the winding accuracy of the fabricated HTS saddle-shaped coil was measured, and the influence of the measurement result on the magnetic field distribution was evaluated.

A 16 T outer superconducting magnet for a 40 T compact hybrid magnet is investigated. A highly strengthened superconducting magnet with a 360 mm room temperature bore can be made using newly developed (Nb, Ti)_3Sn wires with Cu-Al_2O_3 reinforcing stabilizer. The coil weight is outstandingly reduced by as much as 70 %.