The MedAustron project E. Griesmayer a,b, * , T. Schreiner b , M. Pavlovic ˇ c a University of Applied Sciences, Johannes Gutenberg-Strasse 3, 2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria b Fotec – Research and Technology Ltd., Viktor Kaplan-Strasse 2, 2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria c Slovak University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Ilkovicova 3, 812 19 Bratislava, Slovak Republic Available online 22 December 2006 Abstract The Austrian government has approved its financial contribution to the MedAustron project in October 2004. MedAustron, the Aus- trian ion therapy and cancer research centre, should be set into operation in 2010. MedAustron combines medical cancer treatment and cancer research and non-clinical research. For medical treatment and cancer research active scanning of a proton and a carbon-ion beam is provided. The beam energy must correspond to the desirable penetration range of the beam in the patient body, which translates into the energy interval of 60–220 MeV protons and 120–400 MeV per nucleon carbon ions. The intensity of extracted beam is 10 10 protons per spill and four times 10 8 carbon ions per spill. Spill duration can be varied from 1 s to 10 s. For a spill lasting 1 s the beam intensity is equivalent to an electrical beam current of 1.6 nA for protons and 0.38 nA for carbon ions. Although the machine parameters must be optimised for therapy needs, additional beam features can be offered by a modern medical accelerator for non-clinical research. Various ions with energies up to 400 MeV per nucleon can be used for irradiation purposes. For synchrotrons such as proposed in the Design Study the magnetic rigidity would allow to accelerate protons up to 1.18 GeV when using an appropriate RF-system. Two beam lines are proposed for non-clinical research, such as biomedicine, medical physics, physics or industrial technological research. The experimental facility of MedAustron will be offered to research institutes and to industry on an international level. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 87.56.v; 87.56.By; 41.75.Ak Keywords: MedAustron; Ion therapy; Cancer research centre; Proton beam; Carbon-ion beam; Ion-irradiation research 1. Introduction Already in the AUSTRON (the Central European Spallation Source) feasibility study [1] of 1994 a light- ion radio-oncological facility had been included. In the subsequent years a stand alone facility for medical use has been studied and was presented in the MedAustron feasibility study [2] in 1998. In the field of accelerators the Austrian and the Italian group decided to join their efforts in the proton–ion medical machine study (PIMMS) [3,4] – an international, in-depth study hosted by CERN which was published in 2000. In the following a team of forty interdisciplinary scientists, physicians, medical phys- icists and physicists defined the specifications for MedAu- stron and worked out a detailed Design Study [5] of the facility, which has been published in June 2004. Four months later, the Austrian government has approved its financial contribution to the project. The next step was a resolution by the Austrian parliament to assure the reimbursement of the treatment costs by the social insur- ance institutions in December 2004. Since the end of 2005 the tendering procedure is under way. Operation should start in 2010. 0168-583X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nimb.2006.12.082 * Corresponding author. Address: University of Applied Sciences, Johannes Gutenberg-Strasse 3, 2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Tel.: +43 2622 90333; fax: +43 2622 90333 99. E-mail address: eg@fotec.at (E. Griesmayer). www.elsevier.com/locate/nimb Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 258 (2007) 134–138 NIM B Beam Interactions with Materials & Atoms