Particle accelerators don't just smash atoms these days - they kill cancer. California's Loma Linda University Medical Center (www.llu.edu/llumc) spent $80 million to establish the world's first hospital-based proton-beam treatment facility. It's proved so successful that others are being built at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, and six sites in Japan.
Protons are peeled away from hydrogen atoms inside the accelerator and guided through a vacuum tunnel by electromagnets that weigh up to 7,000 pounds each. More electromagnets on a 90-ton, 3-story-high gantry (pictured) bend the beam precisely at the patient's cancerous cells. Unlike traditional X rays, which pass entirely through the body, protons are slowed and absorbed by a tumor, leaving adjacent tissue relatively unharmed - which is crucial in areas near the brain or other major organs. Researchers recently manipulated a proton beam to scan in the same manner in which an electron beam is swept across the screen of a video monitor. Team leader and former Fermilab physicist George Coutrakon predicts that this type of scanned beam will be used to treat breast cancer by 2005. "If protons cost the same as X rays," says Coutrakon, "everyone would use protons."
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