Cancer Treatment Center Upgrades Proton Therapy Treatment to Target Complex Tumors

A proton therapy treatment center has added a number of innovations providing radiation oncologists enhanced proton therapy treatment options to target complex tumors.

The innovations include Pencil Beam Scanning (PBS), an Active Breathing Coordinator (ABC) device, and an advanced treatment planning, and dose-tracking software platform, which provide contouring and 4-D compatibility, multi-criteria optimization, treatment adaptation, near real-time deformable image registration, and dose tracking.

The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) Proton Therapy center (Seattle, WA, USA) invested in the changes to enable care teams to treat tumors more precisely.

Proton therapy can deliver a larger radiation dose to the target area, more accurately, than standard radiation therapy using X-Rays. In addition, much less radiation is delivered to adjacent healthy tissue, reducing the likelihood of side effects. This is especially critical when treating brain, central nervous system, head and neck, gastrointestinal tract, left breast, lung, and prostate tumors. Proton therapy is also useful for treating certain childhood cancers, and sarcomas.

Ramesh Rengan, MD, medical director at SCCA Proton Therapy said, “PBS is the most advanced way to deliver proton radiation and will allow us to sculpt protons for treating more complex tumors, such as in the head and neck, lung, abdomen, and pelvic areas.”

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SCCA Proton Therapy