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The positron camera system has been designed to measure heavy-ion ranges in patients' bodies. The pencil-like beam of positron emitters, such as [sup.11]C, is used to check the range directly and precisely by detecting pairs of annihilation gamma-rays emitted from the end point of the beam trajectory. The positron camera consists of a pair of Anger-type scintillation cameras. The efficiency and the spatial resolution are modeled and simulated by a Monte Carlo method and a numerical calculation so that the positron camera has a high position accuracy for a small amount of irradiation dose. The simulation shows that the optimum effective diameter of the camera crystal is 500 mm and its thickness is 30 mm. The crystal diameter is concluded to be 600 mm by taking the outermost photomultiplier mounting into account. The simulation, moreover, indicates that the range can be measured within an accuracy of 1 mm under the limitation that the irradiation dose has to be less than a few percent of the therapeutic one. Index Terms--Heavy ion, Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC), positron camera, positron emitter, radiotherapy, range.

Purpose: To present the initial experience and preliminary clinical results of patients treated mainly with proton irradiation at the newly developed proton therapy facility at Shizuoka Cancer Center., Materials and Methods: We reviewed 125 patients who underwent proton therapy between July 2003 and December 2004. Of these 125 patients, 11 had head and neck malignancies, 15 non-small cell lung cancers, 22 hepatocellular carcinomas, 62 prostate cancers, and 15 other malignant tumors., Results: Most patients experienced Grade 0-1 acute morbidities (NCI-CTC) in skin or mucosa, while a temporary Grade 2-3 reaction was observed in a high dose area. Response rates were 73% for H & N malignancies, 100% for NSCLC, and 77% for HCC. PSA evaluation for patients with prostate cancer revealed a high rate of complete response., Conclusion: The efficacy and safety of proton therapy at Shizuoka Cancer Center was demonstrated for patients with early-stage cancer or locally advanced disease.

The heavy ion CT system is proposed which is based on measurement of the residual range distribution by a fluoroscopy detector consisting of an intensifying screen and a CCD video camera. To investigate the fundamental performance of the proposed system, the spatial and density resolutions of the CT image were evaluated. The heavy ion beam 12C accelerated up to 400 MeV/u by HIMAC was used in this study. A series of projection images of two types of phantoms (PMMA pipes with several sizes and various kinds of rods with different electron densities) were experimentally taken for five values of range shifter thickness at each projection angle. From these images, the residual range distribution was obtained and used to reconstruct CT images of the relative stopping power which were obtained by the filtered back projection method with the Shepp-Logan filter after noise reduction processing by the median filter. As a result, the spatial resolution was found to be less than 2 mm and the relative density resolution around the density of water was less than 0.07.