Special Seminar: GaToroid: A novel superconducting compact and lightweight gantry for hadron therapy

Enrico Felcini

CERN

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

3:00pm

NW17-218

PSFC Seminars

Abstract:GaToroid is new a concept of beam delivery system for hadron therapy, based on a steady-state, axis-symmetric field configuration. The basic idea is to use fixed toroidal magnets, producing the axis-symmetric field that bends beams from several directions into patient. The magnetic field of this toroidal gantry is static and neither the magnets nor the patient need to be rotated. A single upstream Vector Magnet is used to steer the particles into the gantry with a proper angle, depending on the beam energy and the required direction of treatment. The toroidal magnets operate in steady-state conditions and the use of superconducting materials, both LTS and HTS, results in a significant higher field with respect to the existing normal-conducting solutions. Furthermore, the non-rotating nature of GaToroid strongly simplifies the mechanics and the cryogenics. Large acceptance, static configuration and superconducting technology can offer interesting reduction of gantries of size and weight, creating an attractive alternative to the state of the art.

Bio: Enrico Felcini got his MSc degree cum laude in Energy/Nuclear Engineering at University of Bologna (Italy) in 2016, completing the studies with an internship at CERN to investigate the stability margin of LHC Nb-Ti and Nb₃Sn cables. In the same year, he joined the TERA group at CERN lead by Prof. Ugo Amaldi, working on beam optics and gantry design for hadron therapy. In 2017, Mr. Felcini started a PhD in Applied Superconductivity in collaboration between CERN and EPFL (Switzerland) developing novel toroidal configurations for hadron therapy gantries, under the direct supervision of Luca Bottura, leader of magnets and superconductors group at CERN.