Novel Low-Cost Medical Accelerator Designs for Use in Challenging Environments

The need for Radiation Therapy (RT) for cancer treatment is dramatically underserved in less developed parts both because of the high cost of RT systems and that such systems need reliable utilities. The company plans to use novel technology recently developed to manufacture and market the next generation of RT systems offering both greatly enhanced capabilities and more cost-effective patient treatment. The underlying accelerator technology can be utilized to make low-cost, environmentally insensitive RT systems for underserved markets. The benefits to the DOE and to the public are improved medical systems, and the potential for new low-cost accelerator-based X-ray sources to replace ones using radioactive isotopes. A recent breakthrough in RF linac cell design and topologies has led to extremely efficient structures in terms of RF to beam efficiency. This topology results in a significant reduction in parts count and manufacturing cost. This structure technology will be combined with a low voltage electron gun, beam buncher and x-ray target to form the basis of the low cost medical accelerator proposed in this SBIR. Intrinsically, because of low RF power and cooling requirements, the system is suitable for markets with unreliable utilities. The proposed accelerator including a novel high efficiency buncher was designed and calculations to optimize the x-ray production were performed. In addition, a path to a battery-backed RF power source was laid out. Speed-of-light sections have already been built and tested with performance verify against simulations. In Year 1, the full accelerator will be built and demonstrated with RF. In Year 2, the battery-backed RF source will be built and commissioned with the accelerator to generate beam. Stand-alone operation of the system will be demonstrated.Commercial Applications and Other Benefits The proposed accelerators offer cost reductions in existing accelerator-based x-ray sources that are used for imaging, medical, security and industrial applications. This will boost sales of RT systems over current forecasts, by expanding deployment in underserved markets in low-middle income countries (LMIC) which will account for up to 70% of the world-wide cancer incidence. In addition, our design can be easily adapted for use as replacements for radiological x-rays sources avoiding risk of the latter’s potential misuse in a radiological dispersion device, often termed a ‘dirty bomb’. Because of its efficiency and compactness, it can offer an attractive alternative for betatron-based mobile imaging systems.