Impacts of Proton Accelerator Upgrade on System Level Performance of Proton Therapy Systems

To improve care quality and efficiency of proton therapy systems, the facility has options to upgrade proton accelerator. However, operating a proton therapy facility is complex, and thus it is not obvious to see if an upgrade is necessary and to what level a facility should be upgraded to better serve patients. This study aims to explore the relationship between accelerator upgrade and system level performance. The time of each proton therapy procedure was collected from the proton therapy practice at Mayo Clinic and applied to a simulation model. The current state of 4-gantry proton therapy system was taken as a baseline, and different upgrade options were evaluated. It suggested that a small dose rate increase could achieve a significant system improvement in terms of patient throughput and beam wait time. Besides, the necessity of accelerator upgrade for 3-gantry and 2-gantry proton therapy systems was studied. The improvement of accelerator upgrade for systems with less gantries was mainly demonstrated by decrease of finish time. This study can help a proton beam facility make a proper upgrade decision.