Looked at the webcam, I know it's nuclear medicine, but that is a massive amount of concrete encasing the four treatment rooms!
Here's what a columnist at the NYT thinks of new expensive technology:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... orth-more/
Here's what the Hitachi machine actually looks like:
http://medgadget.com/2011/05/hitachi-pr ... linic.html
Oncology / Radiation Oncology
Hitachi Proton Beam Therapy Coming to Mayo Clinic
by Gene Ostrovsky on May 13, 2011 • 12:44 pm
Hitachi got an order from the Mayo Clinic for two of its Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) systems. The giant setup, which the company claims is “40 percent smaller than that of the conventional system,” involves installing a particle accelerator and four patient treatment rooms, plus one for research. The advantage of PBT is that hydrogen nuclei can be aimed precisely to hit the tumor so that almost all the energy is delivered to the target, sparing healthy tissue in the beam’s path.
From the announcement:
At each facility, there will be four treatment rooms with the rotating gantry systems and one fixed beam room initially used for research and development. Construction for both facilities is scheduled to commence later this year, and proton therapy patient treatment is expected to be offered in the summer of 2015 and spring 2016, respectively.
Spot scanning technology became feasible by advancing the uniform quality beam extraction technology from the accelerator and beam control technology with high accuracy, which includes three primary benefits: (1) more accurate irradiation which can reduce the side effects to the healthy tissues surrounding the tumor compared with conventional double scattering irradiation; (2) patient-specific collimators and boluses are not necessary; and (3) proton beam usage factor is high, reducing unnecessary secondary radiation.
What the building in MN will look like:
Mayo Press Release (They're building one in AZ too):
http://www.mayoclinic.org/proton-beam-t ... ities.html
Proton Therapy Facilities
Proton therapy facilities will be constructed at Mayo Clinic campuses in Arizona and in Minnesota. Each facility will have four proton beam treatment rooms equipped with pencil beam scanning and large machines (synchrotrons) for generating the proton beams.
Mayo is investing more than $370 million in the projects, from Mayo's capital budget and benefactor support. Mayo's facilities are one of the few new proton therapy projects being financed by a medical center.
The treatment capacity of each four-room facility is expected to be about 138 patients a day, or about 1,240 patients each year.
During the building phase of each project, a total of 500 construction jobs will be created. When fully operational, the proton therapy program will employ more than 250 new staff members, including 22 doctors and 29 physicists.
Long story short:
Looks like Mayo will need to research new treatments to really prove the new "Proton Beam Technology" is really more effective the traditional surgery and x-ray radiation, and worth the cost. I'm not doubting their ability to do this, but it looks as though it will require a few $$$, as most research does.