The "Heidelberger Ionenstrahl-Therapiezentrum (HIT)" - the Heidelberg Centre for Ion-Ray Therapy - is the first installation worldwide that utilizes heavy ions, with a radiation source that can be rotated 360°, a so called gantry.
In conventional radiation-therapy with photons, a mobile radiation path has been used successfully in clinical practice for decades.
Proton-facilities also use gantries.
The gantry inside the HIT makes it possible to irradiate a tumor with heavy ions (Carbon, Helium, Oxygen, Protons) from every direction. Additionally the rotor-based radiation-table is adjusted in 6 directions. This means that the radiation bundles from the different directions overlap inside the tumor and add themselves into the total dose only there.
To achieve this, the grid-scanning-method has been integrated into the HIT-gantry, which scans the tumor exactly to the millimeter.
This means optimal reduction of radiation inside healthy tissue which only receives a fraction of the dose achieved inside the tumor.
Especially for complicated tumor localizations, close to a very radiation sensitive organ, like intestine or optical nerve, the best direction for the radiation can be chosen to spare them.
Treatment station
Source: Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg
