MEDICAL AND OTHER APPLICATIONS OF HIGH-ENERGY HEAVY-ION BEAMS FROM HIMAC

A heavy-ion synchrotron facility, HIMAC (Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba), began operating in 1993 at the National Institute of Radio logical Sciences, Japan. The primary purpose of HIMAC is to carry out a clinical studies of cancer treatment using heavy ion beams'. Treatme nt employing carbon beams began in June, 1994, and about 150 patients had been treated by the end of July, 1996. The accelerator of HIMAC, w hich comprises linear accelerators as an injector and a synchrotron, c an accelerate ion beams ranging from helium to argon with a maximum en ergy of 800 MeV/nucleon for ions with a charge-to-mass ratio of 1/2. T he research activities at HIMAC are not limited to medical application s, but include a wide area of research: physics, chemistry, biology, e ngineering, etc. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.