From OncoLog, July/August 2004, Vol. 49, No. 7/8

Building from the Ground Up: A New Proton Therapy Center at M. D. Anderson Will Offer Patients the Latest Technology and Practices

When Alfred R. Smith, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Radiation Physics, came to The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center two years ago, there was only one item on his to-do list: oversee the design, assembly, installation, and testing of literally tons of complicated equipment—and the software needed to operate it—for an 88,000-square-foot, $125 million Proton Therapy Center.

For someone shouldering such a huge responsibility, Dr. Smith seemed unusually calm, almost serene, as he described the steps involved in such a task. First, Dr. Smith—who came to M. D. Anderson from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he was involved in the construction and commissioning of the modern proton therapy center there—and his team spent three months writing the specifications for the equipment, which includes three huge gantries that rotate around the patient, enabling the delivery of treatment from 360 degrees, and a high-energy synchrotron, a compact particle accelerator that emits proton beams of different energies. He then wrote the scope of work and, along with Wayne Newhauser, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Physics, and others, began working with Hitachi, a Japanese company, to design the equipment to meet their specifications. Next came more than a dozen intensive design reviews, followed by assembly and testing of the equipment in Japan. The team was joined last summer by Martin Bues, Ph.D., and more recently by George Ciangaru, Ph.D., both instructors in the Department of Radiation Physics.

“We did a complete assembly in the factory and a mechanical test of the gantry,” Dr. Smith said. “It passed with flying colors. I’m just amazed because it is such an engineering feat.”

After passing inspection in Japan, the equipment was shipped to Houston, where it arrived in June. Moving such massive, yet delicate, equipment is a monumental task in and of itself. “The large gantries, which are 190-ton devices that are three floors in height, are broken down into several pieces,” said Dr. Smith. “We can lower the individual pieces through some large hatches in the ceiling [of the Proton Therapy Center]. The synchrotron is made up of many magnets that can be brought in individually and set up.”

Dr. Smith, Dr. Newhauser, and their team will be on hand to oversee the reassembly of the equipment in Houston and then perform acceptance testing to verify that it meets all of their specifications. If all goes as planned, all four treatment rooms will be operational by the fall of 2006, at which time the center will be equipped to treat about 3,400 patients a year. But the work of Dr. Smith and his colleagues will not be finished.

“We’re thinking about how to improve some of the technology—even before it is installed. We wanted our facility to be on schedule, to be safe and very robust. One makes certain conservative decisions in that process, and having made those decisions, I realize that there is potential to make improvements in the design. Already, we are discussing certain patents that we will hold jointly with Hitachi to develop new technology and techniques in the future,” Dr. Smith said.

For more information on this topic or for questions about M. D. Anderson’s treatments, programs, or services, call the M. D. Anderson Information Line at (800) 392-1611 (in the United States) or (713) 792-3245 (in Houston and outside the United States).

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