Speaker
Description
The MedAustron Ion Therapy Centre has seen the first patient treatment in December 2016. Starting as a single-room, proton-only machine employing only one horizontal beam line, the therapy accelerator has gradually evolved to a three-room p+ and C6+ facility encompassing two horizontal beam lines, one vertical beam line, and a Gantry, allowing us to routinely treat more than 40 patients per day.
This contribution focuses on the challenges related to providing particle beams with high quality and reliability within a clinical setting experiencing a constantly increasing number of patients. Apart from the overall accelerator performance, a key parameter is the accelerator uptime which is basically defined by the mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) of the accelerator hardware and software components. Based on selected examples, we report on our strategies and methods developed during the last six years for maximizing the MTBF and minimizing the MTTR.
