Development of a superconducting rotating-gantry for heavy-ion therapy

Abstract An isocentric superconducting rotating-gantry for heavy-ion therapy is being developed. This rotating gantry can transport heavy ions having 430 MeV/ u to an isocenter with irradiation angles of over ± 180°, and is further capable of performing fast raster-scanning irradiation. For the magnets, combined-function superconducting-magnets are to be employed. All of the superconducting magnets have been designed, and their magnetic-field distributions were calculated by using a 3D electromagnetic-field solver. With the calculated magnetic-fields, beam-tracking simulations were performed to evaluate the field quality of the superconducting magnets. Beam profiles as well as phase-space distributions at the isocenter, as calculated by simulations, agreed well with those of linear beam-optics calculations, proving validity of the final design for the magnets. Three superconducting magnets were manufactured, and are being tested. In this paper, results of tracking simulations as well as test results for the superconducting magnets are presented.