ATPF – a dedicated proton therapy facility

A proton therapy facility based on a linac injector and a slow-cycling synchrotron is proposed. To obtain good treatments for different cancer types, both the spot scanning method and the double-scattering method are adopted in the facility, whereas the nozzles include both gantry and fixed beam types. The proton accelerator chain includes a synchrotron of 250 MeV in maximum energy, an injector of 7 MeV consisting of an RFQ and a DTL linac, with a repetition rate of 0.5 Hz. The slow extraction using the third-order resonance and together with the RFKO method is considered to be a good method to obtain a stable and more-or-less homogenous beam spill. To benefit the spot scanning method, the extraction energy can be as many as about 200 between 60 MeV and 230 MeV. A new method - the emittance balancing technique of using a solenoid or a quadrupole rotator is proposed to solve the problem of unequal emittance in the two transverse planes with a beam slowly extracted from a synchrotron. The facility has been designed to keep the potential to be upgraded to include the carbon therapy in the future.