Inside a single treatment room at the center, several machines hum along in the background. In the middle of the room, a flat, hard table sits under a massive dome. The protons are fired from a nozzle-type device attached to the dome that is aimed directly at the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whole thing rotates,\u201d Lin said as he gestured to the dome. \u201cWhen a patient gets treatment on the table, let\u2019s say you have to treat a specific location, this rotates around the patient to use beams of radiation customized to the anatomy of a patient.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an impressive setup. Proton radiation therapy was approved for cancer treatment in the late 1980s as an alternative option to traditional photon radiation, which is still widely used today.<\/p>\n
But it took time for health systems and hospitals to adopt the technology due to costs and logistics. A cyclotron, or particle accelerator, is needed to generate the protons used in treatment, but the machine can weigh up to 200 tons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt literally had to be crane-lifted down into the ground when we built this center,\u201d Lin said. \u201cThat\u2019s what powers and produces all the protons we use for every patient who gets treatment. So, we have one cyclotron and there are these lines, called a beam line, that sends [protons] to each one of our rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike photon radiation, which uses X-ray beams that enter the body to reach the tumor and then continue through the body to exit, proton radiation was designed to be more precise.<\/p>\n
Charged protons hit the tumor site, but the particles stop there, meaning the radiation doesn\u2019t continue through the body, sparing more healthy tissue from damage.<\/p>\n