Hitachi received an order for state of the art proton cancer treatment system from Mayer, the best hospital in U.S.
(Japanese:
日立製作所が、米国の最高レベル病院から、先進がん治療法の陽子線放射施設を受注！ )
Amazing news to show the competence of Japanese advanced medical technology and devices. (May 10th, Nihon Keizai Shimbun)
Hello. I’m glad to introduce the news which shows the excellency of Japanese medical technology and device.
Hitachi received an order for the new cancer treatment system utilizing proton from
Mayer Clinic, which is the most reputable hospital in U.S. The total order of the system including the years’ maintenance service reaches 20 billion yen. Hitachi attempts to make this opportunity for further extension of its health care business inside and outside Japan.
Proton cancer treatment system is one of the cancer treatment methods using radiation, which kill only the cancer cells with special irradiation. What makes it special and different from X-ray treatment is the ability to focus beam only to the cancer part and leave the normal parts as they are.
Mayer Clinic, well known for its progressive medical services and manages more than 70 institutions will adopt the system to its two hospitals.
The system is quite huge, which consists of one accelerator and five treatment rooms including research room. The construction will start within this year, and will complete between summer in 2015 and spring in 2016.
As to proton cancer treatment system,
IBA in Belgium is the largest, but Hitachi system excels in the precision according to the shape of the tumor. So far Hitachi sold the system utilizing the technology to Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The total sales of Hitachi’s health care business including its group companies are 300 billion yen.
Reference (
National Cancer Center)
New Radiation Therapy…the possibility of Proton Therapy
In the last several years radiation therapy is growing with amazing speed. Gamma Knife, the popular treatment method is using radiation, too, and has been adopted in Japan from 10 years ago. Among various radiation therapies, I would like to focus my explanation on ‘proton therapy’. A few hospitals can operate it, among which is the Cancer Center East Hospital (Kashiwa city), where I work for. It might include my own advertisement, but will give you the understanding of the future direction of radiation treatment.
1. What is proton?
Proton is one of the heavy electric particle rays. Generally X-ray generates when electron is accelerated and hit against metal. When it is irradiated onto human being, the amount of radiation is the largest on the skin surface and gets smaller as it comes deeper inside the body. Compared with this, proton, when it is sent to human body, fairly small radiation is delivered on the skin surface but as it enters inside the body, the radiation is emitted at certain depth and vanishes there.
In the case of X-ray, the amount of the radiation reaches a peak near skin surface, but in proton’s case, it reaches a peak when it goes deeper inside, so by placing tumor there, it is possible to be irradiated efficiently.
I mean, to get a certain effect by X-ray cancer treatment, you get quite an amount of radiation also to the parts around the surface, while proton treatment give less damage to the unrelated parts and give the maximum radiation to the exact point, by previous projection. Thus, proton treatment is to-the-point method.
For those who are interested to know the definition of term, here I show the classification map of radiation. According to this, X-ray is classified as ‘photon beam’, and proton is classified as ‘charged particle radiation’, which belongs to heavy particle beam. Today proton and carbon is used for treatment and is called ‘charged particle radiation’, because they have electric charge. This ‘charged particle radiation’ has a feature that it emits radiation at a specified distance.
As to this ‘charged particle radiation’, in 1946 Wilson proposed to use it for radiation therapy. He was one of the scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the development of atomic bombs. After World War II, he thought that he did not want to do research to kill people any more, but instead wanted to do something to help people. And then he devoted to the research of ‘charged particle radiation’. 8 years later, in 1954, proton therapy started in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in U.S. In Japan, it started in National Institute of Radiological Sciences in 1979 and in Tsukuba University in 1983.
In 1998, National Cancer Center Hospital East found ‘Hospital-style proton therapy treatment medical institution’. Since 1954 when U.S. first started proton therapy, more than 33,000 people have had the therapy using charged particle radiation.
In the past, proton therapy institutions used to be included in physics research institutions. The first institution which brought in the special proton therapy equipment inside the hospital is the medical center in Loma Linda University. And, the second is our hospital, National Cancer Center Hospital East. So, it is only 10 years since proton therapy as medical treatment has started. As proton therapy is practiced in medical institutions, the place can be used anytime, exclusively for cancer treatment, it can be applied to the symptoms with tumor deep inside the organs with high energy, and it is possible to choose the most appropriate direction of the radiation.
For patients, it should be noted that proton therapy needs more time for preparation for planning using computer. Though the proton therapy equipment is fairly large, the radiation rooms where patients actually receive treatment is about the same size as X-ray’s. And outpatient visit is accepted.
