Design of a compact gantry for carbon-ion beam therapy

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a compact gantry that uses superconducting bending magnets (BMs), for use in carbon-ion beam therapy. The size of the gantry is comparable to those of existing gantries that are used for proton-beam therapy. The designed gantry provides point-to-parallel scanning over an area of 20 cm x 20 cm at the isocenter, and has rotationally-invariant optics, which are enabled by quadrupole and dipole magnets together with a 90-degree combined-function magnet with 18.6-cm bore radius. A 90-degree BM accommodates large scanning angles; it also provides equal focusing in horizontal and vertical planes, and zero-integrated nonlinear fields to minimize beam distortion at the isocenter. Three-dimensional field analysis of the magnet, and particle-tracking simulation validate the beam optics of the gantry and point-to-parallel scanning. Taylor map and Lie map are shown to be useful in analysis of magnetic fields and in optimizing the coil windings.