Proton Beam Therapy Equipment

But that calculus is changing.

Proton beam therapy equipment.

Cancerous cells are particularly vulnerable to attacks on dna. What equipment is used. The equipment required for proton beam treatment is massive and expensive. These charged particles damage the dna of cells ultimately killing them by stopping their reproduction and thereby eliminating the tumor.

Particle accelerators don t come cheap. The equipment used for proton therapy initially carried a price tag of between 120 million and 200 million which gave many facilities pause lagasse writes. Proton beam therapy and prostate cancer and. Ferre author of the books best prostate cancer treatment.

These high energy protons are steered by magnets toward the treatment room and then to the specific part of the body being treated. Proton beam radiation therapy is a promising cancer treatment option but the size and cost of instituting the necessary equipment has made widespread access to the treatment a challenge. A large machine called a synchrotron extracts protons from hydrogen atoms accelerating them to almost the speed of light and delivering the radiation with pinpoint accuracy. Proton therapy has changed.

Proton therapy is a type of external beam radiotherapy that uses ionizing radiation in proton therapy medical personnel use a particle accelerator to target a tumor with a beam of protons. Proton therapy is the most technologically advanced method to deliver radiation treatments to cancerous tumors available today. A synchrotron the machine that speeds up the protons before they enter the body typically requires its own building and costs about 100 million. Proton therapy has changed.

Having devised an innovative design to address these hurdles scientists and engineers approached ranor seeking our expertise. Particle accelerators don t come cheap. More nci designated cancer centers choose mevion than any other proton therapy system because of mevion s high quality small footprint and extraordinarily low capital and operating costs. Instead of using x rays like regular radiation treatment it uses protons to sends beams of high energy that can target tumors more precisely than x ray radiation.

Most complete list of u. Traditional proton therapy systems were too expensive too large and much too complex for most cancer treatment centers. Mevion transformed radiation oncology by inventing compact proton therapy shrinking the equipment footprint and the operational and financial costs significantly while still delivering a powerful cancer fighting tool. Proton beam therapy uses special machines a cyclotron and synchrotron being the most common to generate and accelerate protons to speeds up to 60 percent the speed of light and energies of up to 250 million electron volts.