ABSTRACT

An appropriate introduction to this subject can be found in the report published in 2014 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the Global Science Forum, a document in which four case studies of CERN spin-offs are presented. Pierre Mandrillon was a French scientist working on proton and neutron therapy. His initial idea was to design a 400 MeV/u superconducting cyclotron for light ion therapy and he was well advanced with such a design. This was corroborated by the fact that in Japan two synchrotrons were at the heart of the ion therapy centre Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC), which was then under construction. This chapter discusses the history of the AUSTRON project and its transformation into MedAustron. It has a section that is devoted to CERN collaborations in hadron therapy.