An ion-optical design study of a carbon-ion rotating gantry with a superconducting final bending magnet

Ion-optical designs of an isocentric ion gantry with a compact curved superconducting final bending magnet are presented. The gantry is designed for transporting carbon-therapy beams with nominal kinetic energy of 400 MeV/u, which corresponds to the penetration range of C6+ beam in water of about 28 cm. In contrast to other existing designs, we present a “hybrid” beam transport system containing a single superconducting element - the last bending magnet. All other elements are based on conventional warm technology. Ion-optical properties of such a hybrid system are investigated in case of transporting non-symmetric (i.e. different emittance patterns in the horizontal and vertical plane) beams. Different conditions for transporting the non-symmetric beams are analyzed aiming at finding the optimal, i.e. the most compact, gantry version. The final gantry layout is presented including a 2D parallel scanning. The ion-optical and scanning properties of the final gantry design are described, discussed and illustrated by computer simulations performed by WinAGILE.