Nuclear physics applications in diagnostics and cancer therapy

Only 1% of the 18,000 world accelerators are devoted to the production of radioisotopes for medical diagnostics. In fact at present about 85% of all the medical examinations use /sup 99m/Tc produced in nuclear reactors. But the development of Positron Emission Tomography and of its combination with Computer Tomography will boost the hospital use of cyclotrons. Much more general is the use of electron linacs in cancer therapy about 40% of the world accelerators are used for this so called "conventional" radiotherapy. In the developed countries every 10 million inhabitants about 20,000 oncological patients are irradiated every year with high-energy photons (called X-rays by radiotherapists) produced by electron linacs. Much less used is "hadrontherapy", the radiotherapy technique that employs protons, neutrons or carbon ions. Protons and ions are 'heavy' charged particles: they assure a more 'conformal' treatment than X-rays and thus spare better the surrounding healthy tissues allowing a larger dose and thus a larger control rate. By now about 40'000 patients have been treated worldwide with protons and 15 hospital based centres are either running or under construction. The frontier of radiotherapy is now the use of beams of carbon ions having energies up to 400 MeV/u. They deliver the dose as precisely as protons and have a larger biological effectiveness than X-rays and protons so to be particularly suited to treat radio resistant tumours, as proven by the very encouraging results obtained on about 2'000 patients in HIMAC (Chiba, Japan) and on about 250 patients at GSI (Darmstadt). A second Japanese centre is running in Hyogo and two Centres are under construction in Europe: one in Heidelberg (Germany) and the other in Pave (Italy). The Italian Centre, designed by TERA, is based on the optimised medical synchrotron designed in the framework of the 'Proton Ion Medical Machine Study' (PIMMS) carried out at CERN from 1996 to 1999. In fall 2004 the MedAustron project has been approved for construction in the town of Wiener Neustadt (Austria), Projects are getting close to the financing phase in France and in Sweden. Thus Europe is moving coherently towards this new frontier, as also proven by the fact that the five European projects are collaborating in the framework of ENLIGHT, the European Network for Light ion Therapy. In addition industry is getting involved in the construction of turn-key carbon ion centres.