The GSI Cancer Therapy Project

Abstract

At the Heavy Ion Research Institute GSI in Darmstadt an experimental cancer treatment program with a five years duration has been developed. A new method for cancer treatment with ions is applied, using rasterscan method in addition to an active pulse to pulse variation of ion beam properties, including the energy, intensity and focusing. An overview of this Cancer Therapy Project is presented, that covers both accelerator aspects to provide the required beam variations within a short time and the installations at the treatment place for rasterscan control. In addition to a description of the technical design (control-hard- and software) experimental results will be shown, containing the achieved beam properties and measurements of rasterscan performance.