Image-Guided System Offers "Moving-Target” Radiotherapy

A new range of "super" accelerators is designed to advance the treatment of lung, breast, prostate, head and neck, and other types of cancer with unprecedented speed and precision.

The TrueBeam platform can be used for all forms of advanced external-beam radiotherapy, including image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery (IGRT and IGRS), intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT). The system can deliver treatments up to 50% faster, with a dose delivery rate of up to 2,400 monitor units per minute. Intelligent automation further speeds treatments, resulting in an up to five-fold reduction in the number of steps needed for imaging, positioning, and treating patients.

The precision of the system is measured in increments of less than a millimeter, an accuracy made possible by the system architecture, which establishes a high level of synchronization between imaging, patient positioning, motion management, beam shaping, and dose delivery technologies, by performing accuracy checks every ten milliseconds throughout an entire treatment. Over 100,000 data points are monitored continually as a treatment progresses, ensuring that the system maintains a true, or focal point of treatment (the isocenter). The TrueBeam system also delivers new "gated” RapidArc radiotherapy, which compensates for tumor motion by synchronizing imaging with dose delivery during a continuous rotation around the patient.

Other innovations built in to the TrueBeam system include a streamlined treatment console with a graphical, easy-to-use interface that consolidates all controls for imaging, treatment, and motion management. Treatment processes and workflows are simplified and easy to learn, with prompts, messages, and a simple guidance system that enhances safety by guiding therapists through the steps of even the most complex treatments. "One button" IGRT enables the therapist to spend more time attending to the patient, and less time managing the technology. The TrueBeam platform was developed by Varian Medical Systems (Palo alto, CA, USA), and includes the TrueBeam STx, which has been specially configured for advanced radiosurgery.

"This increased level of precision will make it possible for doctors to treat a moving lung tumor as if it were standing still,” said Tim Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems. "By synchronizing treatment with tumor position changes throughout the respiratory cycle, doctors will be able to reduce the margin of healthy tissue affected by the treatment beam.”

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