A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINEAR ACCELERATORS:
“Installation of the first clinical linear accelerator began in June 1952 in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Radiotherapeutic Research Unit at the Hammersmith Hospital, London. It was handed over for physics and other testing in February 1953 and began to treat patients on 7 September that year.”
“Today – Thousands of Medical linear accelerators are used in hospitals around the world and have been effective in treating millions of cancer patients. Researchers continue to further improve the effectiveness of medical linear accelerators in the fight against cancer.”
STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINEAR ACCELERATORS:
From 1937 to 2014: How Linear Accelerators Have Evolved:
1931—A Close Second: The First Cyclotron
1937 – First clinical Van de Graaff generator treatment at Harvard Medical School.
1932-1940—The Decade of the Cyclotron
1940—The Betatron
1945—New Ideas: Synchronous Acceleration Leads to the Microtron
1947—More Synchronicity: The Electron Synchrotron
1947 – First linear accelerator built at Stanford by William Hansen and the Varian brothers.
1952—Even Higher Energies: The Proton Synchrotron
1952—A Strong Leap Ahead: Focusing the Beam
1953—Synchrotrons Become Stronger
1953 – Patient treated with the first medical linear accelerator at Hammersmith Hospital in London.
1953 – Dr. Henry Kaplan and physicist Edward Ginzton developed the first medical linear accelerator in the Western hemisphere. The 6MV unit was installed at Stanford-Lane Hospital in San Francisco.
1946-1954—The Linac Grows Up: An Electron and Proton Linac
1960 – Varian Clinac ®6/100 introduced, the first fully rotational radiotherapy linear accelerator.
1966—Stanford Gets Serious About the Linac: SLAC
1960—The Storage Ring Collider
1969—CERN Enters the Collider Age
1970—Germany Joins the Collider Age
1981—The First Proton-Antiproton Colliders: CERN and FNAL
1981 – Introduction of the Varian Clinac® 2500, the first dual energy medical linear accelerator.
1985 – Philips introduces the SL25®, the first fully digitally controlled medical linear accelerator.
1988 – Varian introduces the Varian Clinac ® 2100C, Varian’s first computer controlled accelerator.
1997 – Stanford continues its research, using intensity-modulated radiation therapy, which combines imaging with linear accelerators that deliver hundreds of thin beams of radiation from any angle.
2004 – Four-dimensional radiotherapy is implemented, which accounts for the motion of breathing during imaging and radiation therapy.
PIONEERS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINEAR ACCELERATORS:
In 1958, Karl Brown was the first to use matrix algebra to calculate magnetic-optical aberrations in charged particle spectrometers, used by physicists for the precise analysis of nuclear and subnuclear structure. He developed a computer code called TRANSPORT to facilitate the equipment design process
Henry Kaplan and Ed Ginzton, PhD, professor of electrical engineering and of physics, developed the first medical linear accelerator in the Western Hemisphere, installed at Stanford-Lane Hospital in San Francisco.
1972 – Dr. Peter Fessenden arrives at Stanford and begins to develop a linear accelerator that combats tumor cells using two types of radiation. Working with Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Dr. Fessenden’s team creates the first linear accelerator that combined both X-ray and electron treatment.
REFERENCES:
From 1937 to 2014: How Linear Accelerators Have Evolved
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/august-2005/gallery-early-linacs
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16790912
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6038195
https://www.sprmn.pt/pdf/pmb6_13_r20_LINACs_(Thwaites&Tuohy).pdf
https://news.stanford.edu/pr/02/brownobit911.html
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/april18/med-accelerator-041807.html
https://www.sprmn.pt/pdf/pmb6_13_r20_LINACs_(Thwaites&Tuohy).pdf