Hypofractionated Prostate Radiotherapy Electromagnetic Positioning Tool Tracks Tumors in Real Time During Treatment

A new add-on tool to existing radiotherapy equipment has been designed to track a tumor at any time during the treatment. The system could enable the clinic to enhance precision in their cancer treatment, offer less side effects, faster treatments, and higher cure rates.

RayPilot, developed by Micropos Medical, AB (Gutenberg, Sweden), has been deployed at the Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH; Finland). RayPilot is installed for real-time electromagnetic prostate localization on a new Elekta (Stockholm, Sweden) Versa HD linear accelerator also equipped with the Brainlab (Feldkirchen, Germany) ExacTrac system. The patients will undergo an every other day hypofractionated protocol of five fractions where internal prostate motion surveillance is made by RayPilot and where the beam will be gated when prostate motion exceeds a predefined margin.

Chief physicist Mikko Tenhunen, from HUCH, stated, “With the RayPilot system, we are able to start the real-time motion monitoring of prostate together with the hypofractionated protocol. The RayPilot system seems to be easy to use and set-up of the system does not increase the time slot needed for treatment remarkably.”

The RayPilot is an add on to existing linear accelerators and consists of mainly three parts, an implantable transmitter, a receiving sensor plate to be positioned on top of any couch and software that localize the transmitter and thus the region-of-interest (ROI) 30 times a second. A complete RayPilot installation is typically performed in a couple of hours.

“We are very happy to also have the largest university hospital in Finland up and running. It is exciting that they directly use the RayPilot in order to enable hypofractionated protocols that will save a lot of time which is beneficial for the clinic, the health care system and for the patient says Charlotta Tilk, sales and marketing manager at Micropos Medical.

Helsinki University Central Hospital is the largest university hospital in Finland with 10 linear accelerators from Varian and Elekta, and more than 1,300 new prostate cancer patients in the Helsinki region each year.

Micropos Medical, AB is a Swedish company that has developed the RayPilot system, which is an electromagnetic positioning and real-time tracking system for a fast and objective set-up and for continuous positioning during radiotherapy. A precise and safe localization of the tumor can greatly improve the outcome of the treatment, especially for hypofractionated protocols. The RayPilot system consists mainly of three parts; one transmitter that is placed close by the tumor, a receiving system that is placed directly on the treatment couch-top and software that continuously shows the precise tumor location, and hence where to focus the linac beam. RayPilot has a unique gating solution qualified and compatible for use with Varian’s (Palo Alto, CA, USA) Clinac iX linear accelerators and Trilogy systems. During 2015 Micropos plans to release an upcoming RayPilot transmitter for positioning, in-situ dosimetry, and automatic patient identification. RayPilot is CE certified for prostate use.

Related Links:
Micropos Medical
Elekta 
Brainlab