CNAO - Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica
Contact: Monica Necchi
Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) is the first medical accelerator facility for deep hadrontherapy with carbon ions and protons in Italy, whose mission is to provide hadron-therapy treatments and to perform research in related fields. CNAO is also a Center of Research and Development, whose activities range from clinical and radiobiological research to translational research with the objective of providing continual improvements in the capacity to cure.
The main accelerator of CNAO is a synchrotron. Outside the main ring there are four extraction lines leading the extracted beam into three treatment rooms. An experimental room already exists, and a dedicated beam line is planned to be realized. This experimental beam will be available for different types of experiments and for several external research groups. The diagnostic imaging and nuclear medicine service is composed of a 3T MRI, one CT and one CT-PET. Although CNAO is a young facility, it has grouped many scientists with strong backgrounds in their field in order to achieve excellence in all fields related to hadrontherapy. The radiobiology laboratory in CNAO was set up in 2011 to give the opportunity to perform wide radiobiological studies with proton and carbon ion beams to the internal radiobiology group and to external researchers. Although new and still under development, it is equipped for the large scale experiments typically needed for cell survival tests and radiobiological research. The realization of CNAO is based on a strong collaborative network, the CNAO Collaboration, that links CNAO with the most important institutions in Italy and abroad.
Image courtesy of CNAO