Towards FLASH Proton Irradiation at HZB

The HZB cyclotron has been providing protons for eye-tumor treatment for more than 20 years. While it has been very successful using conventional dose rates (15-20 Gy/min), recent studies indicate that rapid irradiation with very high dose rates (FLASH) might be equally efficient against tumors but less harmful to healthy tissues. The flexible operation schemes of the HZB cyclotron can provide beams with variable intensities and time structures, covering a wide unexplored regime within the FLASH requirements (>40 Gy/s in 500 ms). This paper presents the results of the first FLASH beam production at HZB towards the establishment of an in-vivo clinical irradiation in the future.
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Cyclotrons and their Applications, Cyclotrons2019, Cape Town, South Africa