ANL, Lemont, Illinois, USA
RadiaBeam, Santa Monica, California, USA
Hadron therapy offers improved localization of the dose to the tumor and much improved sparing of healthy tissues, compared to traditional X-ray therapy. Combined proton/carbon therapy can achieve the most precise dose confinement to the tumor. Moreover, recent studies indicated that adding FLASH capability to such system may provide significant breakthrough in cancer treatment. The Advanced Compact Carbon Ion Linac (ACCIL) is a conceptual design for a compact ion linac based on high-gradient accelerating structures operating in the S-band frequency range. Thanks to this innovation, the footprint of this accelerator is only 45 m, while its capabilities are well beyond the current state of the art for hadron therapy machines and include: operation up to 1000 pulses per second, pulse to pulse energy variation to treat moving tumors in layer-by-layer regime. ACCIL is capable of accelerating all ions with mass-to-charge ratio A/q ~ 2 to a full energy of 450 MeV/u, and that includes protons, helium, carbon, oxygen and neon. With very short beam pulses of ~ 1 ’s and high instantaneous dose delivery, ACCIL is capable of delivering FLASH-like doses (>100 Gy/sec) for most ion species. In close collaboration between Argonne and Radiabeam, we have developed different design options and prototypes of the high-gradient structures needed for ACCIL. Following an overview of the ACCIL design and its capabilities, the most recent results from the high-gradient structure R&D and future plans will be presented and discussed.
