BACKGROUND Particle irradiation was established at the University of Heidelberg 2 years ago. To date, more than 400 patients have been treated including patients with primary brain tumors. In malignant glioma (WHO IV) patients, two clinical trials have been set up-one investigating the benefit of a carbon ion (18 GyE) vs. a proton boost (10 GyE) in addition to photon radiotherapy (50 Gy), the o...

Carbon-ion radiotherapy is being carried out at Gunma University Heavy Ion Medical Centre (GHMC) since March 2010. A compact electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) for GHMC, so-called KeiGM, supplies carbon 4+ ions for treatment. The general structure of KeiGM was copied from a prototype compact source, socalled Kei2. Based on experimental studies for production of carbon 4+ ions with ...

UNLABELLED The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of MET-PET as an evaluation method of the therapeutic effect of carbon ion beam radiotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty-four choroidal melanoma patients who were treated with a carbon ion beam underwent at least three MET-PET scans before and after therapy. The uptake was visually and semiquantitatively evaluated on the basis of...

Carbon ion radiotherapy at HIMAC started in 1994 using two horizontal and two vertical beam ports with broad beam method. The maximum beam energy extracted from accelerators was 400 MeV/n for the horizontal beam port, and 350 MeV/n for the vertical one. In recent years, the scope of diseases that can be treated by the carbon ion radiotherapy has widened and their tumor targets have varied in di...

BACKGROUND In radiation therapy with ion beams, lateral distributions of absorbed dose in the tissue are important. Heavy ion therapy, such as carbon-ion therapy, is a novel technique of high-precision external radiotherapy which has advantages over proton therapy in terms of dose locality and biological effectiveness. METHODS In this study, we used Monte Carlo method-based Geant4 toolkit to ...

This work aimed at measuring cell-killing effectiveness of monoenergetic and Spread-Out Bragg Peak (SOBP) carbon-ion beams in normal and tumour cells with different radiation sensitivity. Clonogenic survival was assayed in normal and tumour human cell lines exhibiting different radiosensitivity to X- or gamma-rays following exposure to monoenergetic carbon-ion beams (incident LET 13-303 keV/mic...

The aim of this study was to prospectively assess 5-year health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of patients treated with carbon ion radiotherapy (C-ion RT) for clinically localized prostate cancer. A total of 417 patients received carbon ion radiotherapy at a total dose of 63-66 Gray-equivalents (GyE) in 20 fractions over 5 weeks, and neoadjuvant and adjuvant androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) ...