Status of the "etoile" project for a French hadrontherapy centre

It is proposed to build a national centre for light-ion hadrontherapy in France, located in Lyon in the Rhone-Alpes region. Under the auspices of University Claude Bernard Lyon-1 and with the support of a research contract between Rhone-Alpes region and the Minister of Research, a design has been elaborated. This paper reviews the medical and technical characteristics of the project, called ETOILE (Espace de Traitement Oncologique par Ions Legers dans le cadre Europeen). The research programs associated with ETOILE concern mainly the tracking of moving organs, the design of an in-beam PET detector, the simulation of the interaction of carbon ions with tissues and radiobiological studies on the radiosensitivity and tolerance of normal tissues and on the radioresistance of tumours. The capital cost needed to realize ETOILE is about 90 ME. We expect a definitive decision to build ETOILE at the end of 2004. In that case the centre will treat its first patients in 2009. A routine flux of 1000 patients per year will be reached after 3 years with an operation cost of 15 MEuro.