Proton and Ion Beam Therapy Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
- 25.4% of the field sits with five assignees. The top 5 combined account for 908 of 3,578 records in scope — a concentrated core surrounded by a long tail across the other 95 ranked assignees.
- Filings fell 67% from 2021 to 2024. 254 records in 2021 dropped to 84 in 2024, the last year the trend can be read as complete before publication lag distorts the count.
- Electrotherapy claims dominate, but accelerator physics is a distinct second tier. A61N covers 66.9% of records, while H05H (particle accelerators) and G21K (particle/radiation handling) each sit near 11-13%, marking where hardware claims concentrate outside the clinical delivery classes.
Filing growth compares 2021 (254 records) with 2024 (84) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 3,578 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 3,578 patent records published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine proton or ion beam therapy delivery concepts — pencil beam scanning, Bragg peak targeting, range uncertainty correction — with the accelerator and beam-handling hardware that makes clinical delivery possible. The search string deliberately pairs clinical-delivery terms with engineering terms like synchrotron design and facility cost, so the corpus captures both the treatment-planning side and the physical plant side of the technology.
Records here are periodically indexed as families where possible, which matters in a field where a single gantry or nozzle design is often filed in parallel across the United States, Europe and the PCT route. Reading the concentration and IPC figures against that backdrop tells a more reliable story than raw document counts would.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,578-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend: a 2017 peak, then a real pullback
Annual filings ran from 261 in 2017 down to 8 in 2026 (a partial year). The more reliable read is 2021 to 2024, where filings fell from 254 to 84 records — a 67% drop over three years. Counts for 2025 and 2026 will keep rising as publication catches up with filing, roughly an 18-month lag, so treat the most recent two years as undercounted rather than as evidence of a further decline.
Where the claims sit: IPC subclass composition
A61N (electrotherapy and radiation therapy) covers 66.9% of the 3,578 records, confirming that most filings still describe the clinical delivery apparatus itself. Beneath that, A61B (diagnosis and surgery, 15.0%), G21K (particle and radiation handling, 12.7%), H05H (particle accelerators, 10.7%) and G01T (radiation measurement, 10.5%) form a second tier of hardware and metrology claims. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares sum to well over 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,578 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Proton and Ion Beam Therapy with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about proton and ion beam therapy and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US9108050B2 — Pencil beam scanning delivery system
A system and method for improving beam delivery quality in proton therapy by pencil beam scanning of a predeterminable volume within a patient, minimising beam position errors. The system combines a proton source, beam bending and focusing units, a nozzle, a beam bending magnet, sweeper magnets for lateral scanning, a position-sensitive detector, and control logic governing beam position and energy against a steering data set.Filed by Paul Scherrer Institut, published 2015-08-18.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4870287A | Multi-station proton beam therapy system | 944 |
| 2 | US5511549A | Normalizing and calibrating therapeutic radiation delivery systems | 422 |
| 3 | US5117829A | Patient alignment system and procedure for radiation treatment | 414 |
| 4 | US5668371A | Method and apparatus for proton therapy | 408 |
| 5 | US6683318B1 | Ion beam therapy system and a method for operating the system | 394 |
| 6 | US7208748B2 | Programmable particle scatterer for radiation therapy beam formation | 336 |
| 7 | US7199382B2 | Patient alignment system with external measurement and object coordination for radiation therapy system | 328 |
| 8 | US7280633B2 | Path planning and collision avoidance for movement of instruments in a radiation therapy environment | 316 |
| 9 | US6891177B1 | Ion beam scanner system and operating method | 316 |
| 10 | US7173265B2 | Modular patient support system | 284 |
Citation counts favour older, foundational filings in any searched corpus — read them as a measure of influence on later filings, not as a signal of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for filing strategy
Three patterns worth acting on before drafting new claims or scoping freedom-to-operate in this space.
The top of the field is genuinely concentrated
Five assignees hold 908 of 3,578 records, and the top ten hold 1,451 — 40.6% of the field. That leaves a substantial tail across the remaining ranked assignees, most of whom hold single-digit filing counts. Freedom-to-operate work should prioritise the leaders' portfolios first, then sample the tail rather than treating it as uniform risk.
Filing volume has genuinely cooled, not just lagged
The drop from 254 records in 2021 to 84 in 2024 is large enough to survive the usual publication-lag caveat, since 2024 is treated as a complete year. That suggests consolidation around established designs rather than a wave of new entrants, though 2025-2026 figures will still revise upward as later publications land.
Clinical delivery claims dominate; hardware is a distinct layer
A61N's dominance confirms most activity still targets the therapy-delivery apparatus, but H05H and G21K together mark a smaller, more specialised accelerator-and-beam-handling layer. Filers targeting synchrotron or cyclotron design specifically compete in a narrower, more technical pool than the headline A61N number suggests.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to proton and ion beam therapy, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it opens up
The ranked assignee list runs 100 entries deep, from a clear leader down through a long tail of single- and double-digit filers. Recent-year momentum figures show several previously active filers now at zero or sharply negative year-on-year activity, which is as informative as the raw counts.
A single leader well ahead of fifth place
The top-ranked assignee holds 254 records against 142 at fifth place and 81 at tenth — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-field structure rather than a flat distribution.
A small inventor network drives internal collaboration
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pair shares 44 records together, with two more pairings from the same core group at 42 and 32. This points to a tight inventor team rather than broad cross-company collaboration.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet even among leaders
Several of the most historically active assignees show zero filings in the latest year, some down 100% year-on-year from a prior filing. That is consistent with the broader 2021-2024 pullback rather than a single company's retreat.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ion Beam Applications (IBA) | 1 | 0% |
| RaySearch Laboratories | 0 | -100% |
| Xyleco Inc | 0 | — |
| Loma Linda University Medical Center | 0 | — |
| Neuboron Medtech (Xiamen) | 0 | -100% |
| BALAKIN VLADIMIR | 0 | — |
| Varian Medical Systems | 0 | — |
| Veracyte Inc | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. The next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy, or spotting where to file next.
Map claims against the leading assignees' portfolios
Start with the assignees holding the largest blocks of the 908 top-5 records before sampling the long tail, since that is where the densest prior art sits.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTest draft claims against the under-claimed branches
Range uncertainty correction and compact gantry design show thinner filing density than the core delivery classes — a reasonable place to check novelty before drafting.
Run a novelty check in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The ranked assignee list shows one clear leader with 254 records, well ahead of fifth place at 142 and tenth place at 81. The top five assignees combined hold 908 records, or 25.4% of the 3,578 records in scope, and the top ten hold 40.6%. Beyond that, the ranking runs to 100 assignees with a long tail of much smaller filers, so due diligence should not assume the field is evenly spread.
Filings peaked in 2017 at 261 records and have declined since; between 2021 and 2024, the last year that can be read as complete, filings fell from 254 to 84, a 67% drop. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that is largely an artefact of publication lag — publication typically trails filing by around 18 months, so recent years will keep revising upward. Treat 2024 as the most recent reliable data point for judging real momentum.
Two-thirds of records (66.9%) fall under A61N, the electrotherapy and radiation therapy classification covering clinical delivery systems. A smaller but distinct layer covers the physical accelerator and beam-handling hardware: G21K (particle and radiation handling, 12.7%), H05H (particle accelerators, 10.7%) and G01T (radiation measurement, 10.5%). Because a single patent can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages overlap rather than summing to 100%.
US9108050B2, assigned to Paul Scherrer Institut and published in 2015, claims a pencil beam scanning system combining a proton source, beam bending and focusing units, a nozzle, sweeper magnets, a position-sensitive detector and control logic that governs beam position and energy against a steering data set. It is a system-level claim over the combination of these elements for minimising beam position error during scanning, not a claim over pencil beam scanning as a concept. Designing around it generally means altering the detector-feedback architecture or the specific steering-control logic rather than avoiding pencil beam scanning altogether.
Relative to the dense A61N delivery-system claims, filing density is thinner in real-time range uncertainty correction, in-vivo linear energy transfer verification, and compact synchrotron gantry designs aimed at reducing facility footprint and cost. These branches sit closer to the G21K, H05H and G01T classes, which together cover roughly a tenth to an eighth of records each rather than two-thirds. That gap is worth checking against specific claim language before assuming it is truly open, since class-level thinness does not guarantee an absence of blocking claims.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.