The Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital was opened in 2001 and has treated more than 10,000 patients. The facility relies upon an IBA cyclotron and delivers the treatment beam to two 360o gantries and a dedicated ocular treatment line. Before 2001, patients were treated with protons at the Harvard Cyclotron Laboratory across the river at Harvard University.
The Gordon Browne Proton Therapy Center has been in operation since February 2020 and is housed in the Lunder Building next to the photon clinic. It is a compact facility that features a robotic patient positioner, cone beam CT and orthogonal X-ray imaging, a pencil beam scanning nozzle, a 70 to 330 MeV synchrotron accelerator, and a gantry that rotates the nozzle through 190 degrees. The combination of these technologies enables 3-dimensional imaging of the patient, movement of a precise point within the patient to the treatment area, and the delivery of one or more highly-conformal beams that intersect the target volume. The facility has 3-dimensional electronic control of the dose without the need of patient specific hardware and rotating beam degraders. The lateral dose distribution is controlled by 2-dimensional magnetic scanning of individual proton pencil beams and the longitudinal dose distribution is controlled by synchrotron electromagnets.
Click here to learn more about proton therapy at Mass General.
The Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center
The Gordon Browne Proton Therapy Center
