Production of 11C-beam for particle therapy

A technical realization of a positron emitter 11C-beam (R.I.) as an accelerating beam has been studied at NIRS-HIMAC in order to apply it to heavy-ion therapy. The purpose of the present study is to show how to obtain a suitable beam intensity of a 11C-beam extracted from the HIMAC-synchrotron. Regarding this study, related developments include the production of radioactive isotopes (11C) by a cyclotron, gas-separation, gas-compression, gas-pulsing and ionization. Further, residue 11CO2-gas can be reproduced in the ionization process. As the result of a calculation, an order of 108 ppp of 11C6+ ions can be extracted from the HIMAC-synchrotron during 18 min at 3.3 s intervals with a 1 ms beam pulse under the assumption of 1 Ci of 11C-production. Details of the study are presented.