Weinrich, U.

Paper	Title	Page
TUOCG01	The Heidelberg Ion Therapy (HIT) Accelerator Coming into Operation	979
	D. Ondreka, U. Weinrich GSI, Darmstadt
	The Heidelberg Ion Therapy Facility (HIT) is the first dedicated proton and carbon therapy facility in Europe. It uses full three dimensional intensity-controlled raster scanning as basic treatment technique. The commissioning of the accelerator with beam was successfully finished for two fixed-beam treatment places in December 2007. Therefore a library of 40000 combinations of beam properties (ion type, treatment place, energy, intensity, beam size) is now offered to the treatment technique teams preparing the treatment systems for the clinical use. The HIT facility also comprises a gantry with full scanning properties constituting the only carbon ion gantry worldwide. The gantry can be rotated by 360 degree, so that the beam may be aimed at the patient from arbitrary directions. Commissioning with beam of the gantry was started in January 2008 when the first beams were transported successfully into the treatment room. The talk will report on experiences and results of the commissioning of the accelerator sections. It puts special emphasis on the subject of preparing the enormous variety of beam properties in an efficient and reliable way.
	Slides
TUPP133	Assembly of the Carbon Beam Gantry at the Heidelberg Ion Therapy (HIT) Accelerator	1839
	U. Weinrich, R. Fuchs GSI, Darmstadt E. Sust MT Mechatronics, Main
	The HIT facility comprises the only carbon ion gantry worldwide. This gantry is especially unique in offering fully flexible beam transport to the patient up to a magnetic rigidity of 6.6 Tm, equivalent to an energy of C-ions of 430 MeV/u. It includes a full 3D-beam scanning system and full medical treatment environment. The gantry can be rotated by 360 degree so that the beam may be aimed at the patient from arbitrary directions. Commissioning of the gantry with beam was started in January 2008, when the first beams were transported into the treatment room. The design and assembly of this gantry with a rotating mass on the order of 600 tons was a real challenge to the project partners involved, in particular the supplier MT Mechatronics. Given the tight tolerances for the position of the beam line components the survey and alignment procedure was difficult, since also the elastic deformation for the different rotation angles had to be taken into account. This presentation will report on the experiences and results of the assembly and alignment phases. Furthermore, the final performance reached for precision and reproducibility of the beam line components will be presented.
TUPP134	Commissioning of the Carbon Beam Gantry at the Heidelberg Ion Therapy (HIT) Accelerator	1842
	U. Weinrich, C. M. Kleffner GSI, Darmstadt
	The HIT facility comprises the only carbon ion gantry worldwide. This gantry is especially unique in offering fully flexible beam transport to the patient for carbon ions up to an energy of 430 MeV/u. It includes a full 3D-beam scanning system and full medical treatment environment. The gantry can be rotated by 360 degree so that the beam may be directed at the patient from arbitrary directions. Commissioning with beam of the gantry was successfully started in January 2008 when the first proton and carbons beams were transported into the gantry treatment room. Based on theoretical calculations for rotation independent settings of the beam optics, the beam commissioning aims for an efficient practical way to realize the full variety of required beam properties (2 ion types, 10 intensities, 255 energy steps, and four beam sizes) in the isocenter independent of the gantry angle. The presentation will report on the concept and progress of the beam commissioning process.