Proton therapy has been in use for over 40 years, and is a mature treatment technology.

"Is proton therapy better than traditional radiation for cancer treatment?"

It was most notable for its contributions to the development of proton therapy.

Proton therapy is not experimental and has been used in the United States since 1946.

Radiologists have been using proton therapy to treat cancer since the 1950s.

Since 2003 three or four more proton therapy centers have opened in the United States.

The question is whether the proposed improvements from proton therapy justify the increased cost of these treatments.

A proton therapy beam's powerful energy is focused directly on a patient's tumor.

After proton therapy, however, patients can retain useful vision.

Proton therapy uses a different type of energy (protons) rather than X-rays.

Using current technology, proton therapy requires a very large capital investment (from $100M to more than $180M).

Researchers followed more than 200 men for at least one year after they received proton therapy for prostate cancer.

Proton therapy Radiation can be useful in awkward locations to make surgery more effective.

The newer proton therapy machines use a pencil beam scanning technology.

Today there are only nine centers in the U.S that provide proton therapy.

Another kind of radiation therapy used mostly in clinical trials is proton therapy.

Proton therapy is far more expensive than conventional therapy.

Several industrial teams are working on development of comparatively small accelerator systems to deliver the proton therapy to patients.

Today, cancer treatment with proton therapy is on the rise with many new centers projected to open in the next decade.

The proton accelerators are also used for the proton therapy program.

Proponents of proton therapy cite advantages over other forms of radiation.

"This is the promise we are seeing with proton therapy," says Siddiqui, who was not involved with the research.

Synchrocyclotrons are attractive for use in proton therapy because of the ability to make compact systems using high magnetic fields.

The most common type of particle therapy as of 2012 is proton therapy.

Proton therapy is a type of external beam radiotherapy using ionizing radiation.