ErUM transfer pilot projects NitroFlash, CYPRES, and MEDESES officially launched
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) aims to improve the transfer of “exploration of universe and matter” technologies developed for research at large-scale facilities with the program "ErUM-Transfer". The projects NitroFlash, CYPRES, and MEDESES have now been launched as pilot projects at DESY for this funding program.
NitroFlash
FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment by using ultra-high dose rates to drastically reduce treatment times. With FLASH-RT, the therapeutic effect on tumor tissue can be maximized while minimizing the toxicity of the treatment to healthy tissue and thus minimizing side effects.
For extremely precise control of the radiation required for FLASH-RT, a specialized dosimeter is essential to measure ultra-high dose rates with very short pulse lengths. There is currently no operational dosimetry system on the market that meets the requirements to reliably measure the high dose administered by ultrashort, high-intensity electron pulses for FLASH-RT during irradiation.
As part of the ErUM-Transfer pilot projects funded by the BMBF, NitroFLASH (total funding value: 750,677 Euro) is a cooperation between DESY, the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen, and the associated partner Berthold Technologies GmbH. The plan is to develop a first-of-its-kind detector for integrated online dosimetry in the timescale of FLASH-RT irradiation pulses. NitroFLASH will not only develop the necessary dosimeter, but also provide an integrated monitoring system for beam positioning.
The aim of this project is to meet the safety and quality control requirements for clinical and patient safety for FLASH cancer therapy for use in corresponding human clinical applications.
CYPRES
Compact laser-driven plasma accelerators have the potential to enable breakthrough applications in medical diagnostics, radiotherapy, and industrial imaging. Although laser plasma acceleration is well-established in laboratories, the limited repeatability of current sources restricts their widespread commercial use.
The ErUM-Transfer pilot project CYPRES (total funding value: 867,165 Euro) is a cooperation between DESY, the University of Hamburg, and Siemens Healthineers. The aim of CYPRES is to overcome the above limitation by demonstrating a compact LPA source with a repetition rate of several kilohertz. This will meet the requirements of industrial applications—particularly in the medical field—by providing application-oriented performance data, outlining feasible application scenarios, and demonstrating the concept on a laboratory scale. This will prepare breakthrough accelerator models for commercial use.
MEDESES
Synchrotron facilities contribute to social advancements by enabling technological research in basic and applied sciences. However, moving from basic knowledge to implementation in products often takes a long time. Industrial research, on the other hand, usually focuses on problems that are closer to the development of the end user product.
The ErUM transfer pilot project MEDESES (total funding value: approx. 1 million Euro) is a collaboration between DESY, BASF, and the associated partner ESRF. The vision is to build a bridge between high-caliber research and industrial application. MEDESES will do this by accelerating the process from discovery to industrial application, making knowledge, methods, and technologies more rapidly available to industry and society as a whole.
The main aim of MEDESES is the implementation of an X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRPD) and Total Scattering (TS) data analysis platform at the X-ray radiation source PETRA III. This lays the foundation for a commercial enterprise that provides high-quality synchrotron data and makes extracted material parameters accessible to materials scientists worldwide.
published
- 2024/01/22
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