On the National Technology Day 2023, the Prime Minister dedicated to Nation the National Hadron Beam Therapy Facility in Navi Mumbai.
Key points
- National Hadron Beam Therapy Facility of Tata Memorial Centre, Navi Mumbai is a state-of-the-art facility which works to undertake highly precise delivery of radiation to the tumour with minimal dose to the surrounding normal structures.
- The precise delivery of dose to target tissue reduces the early and delayed side effects of radiation therapy.
- Using crossing beams from many angles, radiation oncologists irradiate the tumour target while trying to spare the surrounding normal tissues. Inevitably some radiation dose is always deposited in the healthy tissues.
- When the irradiating beams are made of charged particles (protons and other ions, such as carbon), radiation therapy is called hadrontherapy.
- The strength of hadrontherapy lies in the unique physical and radiobiological properties of these particles; they can penetrate the tissues with little diffusion and deposit the maximum energy just before stopping. This allows a precise definition of the specific region to be irradiated.
