PAMELA - A model for an FFAG based hadron therapy machine

Approximately one third of the world?s 15000 accelerators are used for tumour therapy and other medical applications. Most of these are room temperature cyclotrons: a few are synchrotrons. Neither of these have ideal characteristics for a dedicated medical accelerator. The characteristics of FFAGs make them ideally suited to such applications, as the much smaller magnet size, greater compactness and variable energy offers considerable cost and operational benefits especially in a hospital setting. In the first stage the work on PAMELA will focus on the optimization of the FFAG design to deliver the specific machine parameters demanded by therapy applications. In this phase of the PAMELA project the effort will concentrate on the design of a semi-scaling type FFAGs to deliver a 450 MeV/u carbon ion beam, including detailed lattice and tracking studies. The second stage will use the existing expertise in the BASROC consortium to undertake a design of the magnets and RF system for PAMELA. An outline of the overall concept of PAMELA will be discussed and the actual status of the work will be presented.