Varian Medical Systems Acquisition to Add Software for Accelerating Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (Palo Alto, CA, USA) reported that it has acquired the assets of IKOEmed and IKOEtech (both based in Houston, TX, USA), privately owned suppliers of software used in the planning of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments. The acquisition enables Varian to offer hospitals and clinics an additional software tool to automate and accelerate the most time-consuming portion of the treatment planning process.

Varian is paying approximately US$2.2 million plus an additional amount based on achievement of specified milestones to acquire the IKOE assets. The software is designed to achieve greater than 50% reduction in the contouring portion of the radiotherapy treatment planning process, which typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours. It automates the contouring process by matching patient images with pre-contoured images from an expert database created by renowned radiation oncologists. This eliminates the need for clinicians to manually outline between 10 and 20 organs in each of anywhere from 100-200 images of a patient's disease site.

"This is another important step in our ongoing initiative to make cancer treatments better, faster, easier, and more cost effective,” said Tim Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems. "This new tool should save a lot of time in planning for complex cases, particularly in cancers of the head and neck and lymph systems.” The IKOE software, which has U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance, complements Varian's existing segmentation tools currently used to automate planning for prostate, breast, and lung treatments.

Varian will sell the software initially in the United States as a standalone product that will work with most radiotherapy treatment planning software products in the industry. The company plans to integrate it with its global market leading Eclipse treatment planning software for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, and brachytherapy.

Varian anticipates the acquisition be neutral to earnings for the company in the current fiscal year and accretive thereafter. "We expect that our worldwide sales, service, and support network will contribute to faster and deeper market penetration for these software products,” Mr. Guertin said. The IKOE software is now installed in about 20 sites, primarily in the United States.

Varian Medical Systems is a world-leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy, and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers, and medical oncology practices. Varian is a major supplier of tubes and digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies X-ray imaging products for cargo screening and industrial inspection.

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