Ion Sources for Medical Applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews various ion sources used in medical accelerators, highlighting their characteristics and suitability for applications like cancer therapy and isotope production.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of ion source types and their specific roles in different medical accelerator applications.

Findings

Different ion sources meet specific beam quality requirements.

Ion source selection depends on application-specific needs.

The paper discusses the advantages of various ion source characteristics.

Abstract

Ion sources are key components of accelerators devoted to different types of medical applications: hadron-therapy facilities (accelerating protons or carbon ions), high-intensity accelerators for boron-neutron capture therapy (using intense proton beams), and facilities for isotope production (using different ion species). The three types of application present different requirements in terms of ion beam quality, reproducibility, and beam availability. Different characteristics of ion sources will be described, along with the reasons why they are particularly interesting or largely used.