Part I Laser driven particle acceleration: From experiments to devices.- Ultra-intense lasers and particle acceleration: past, present and future.- Laser-plasma interactions and stable production of ultrashort relativistic electron bunches.- Proton acceleration: state of the art and perspectives.- Recent progress on laser-driven particle acceleration in China.- Multi-GeV regime of Laser-Wakefield dual-stage accelerator.- Dosimetry of pulsed particle sources.- Part II Biophysical studies with laser driven particle sources.- High-energy radiation femtochemistry.- High-dose rate exposure of biological matter.- Comparative radiobiological tests with RF versus Laser-driven electron bunches.- Ultrafast X-ray imaging of living cells.- Biological responses triggered by laser-driven sources (proton and X-ray).- Part III Synchrotron, ion accelerator and microbeam.- Synchrotron source: dosimetry and pre-clinical trials.- Microbeam radiation and biological responses.- Cyberniffe, dose fractioning for clinical protocols.- Protontherapy of cancer.- Ion radiotherapy: state of the art and future.
Antonio Giulietti is a physicist operating at INO (National
Institute of Optics, Italy). He has been CNR Research Director and Head of the Unit
"Adriano Gozzini" of INO. He founded ILIL (Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory) in the CNR Campus of Pisa which
has been operating for more than 20 years with scientific output and
international collaboration making ILIL a primary reference in the domain of
laser-plasmas. AG is author of more than 200 papers published on international
refereed journals, mainly in the field of laser and plasma physics, plasma
instabilities relevant to Inertial Fusion, radiation from plasmas, laser-driven
particle acceleration and their biomedical potential. AG has organized and
chaired a large number of international conferences on these topics. He is
member of the International Advisory Board of the International Conference on
High Energy Density Science, annually held in Yokohama. His research group has
been supported by CNR, Italian Ministry of Education, Italian Ministry of
Health, European Union, Extreme light Infrastructure (ELI), CEA (France), JSPS
(Japan). AG has been very active in teaching and tutoring students and young
scientists. Young scientists trained in the AG' lab are today Professors or
Researchers in prestigious Universities or Research Institutions, including
Universities of Pisa, Siena, Milano, Bordeaux, Oxford, Belfast, Ecole
Polytechnique in Palaiseau, CEA-Saclay, BMI-Berlin, Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory. In the last ten years 2006-2015 AG devoted most of his work at
studying possible medical uses of laser-driven particle accelerators. Experiments performed in Pisa and at
CEA-Saclay led to the discovery of a high efficiency acceleration regime
allowing the production of electron bunches whose charge and kinetic energy are
suitable for radiotherapy. Those electrons were also used to drive a gamma
sources and produce photo-activation, so opening a perspective of interest for
nuclear medicine. In the meantime AG promoted R&D studies to achieve a
practical usability of laser-driven accelerators in radiobiology and clinics, also
in collaboration with CEA-Saclay and University of Osaka. In this framework he
recently published (2015) a review paper on “Laser-Plasma Particle Sources for
Biology and Medicine”.
This book deals with the new method of laser-driven acceleration for application to radiation biophysics and medicine. It provides multidisciplinary contributions from world leading scientist in order to assess the state of the art of innovative tools for radiation biology research and medical applications of ionizing radiation. The book contains insightful contributions on highly topical aspects of spatio-temporal radiation biophysics, evolving over several orders of magnitude, typically from femtosecond and sub-micrometer scales. Particular attention is devoted to the emerging technology of laser-driven particle accelerators and their applicatio to spatio-temporal radiation biology and medical physics, customization of non-conventional and selective radiotherapy and optimized radioprotection protocols.