Tomotherapy Delivery System Helps to Provide Fast Cancer Treatment Planning

An innovative new discrete-angle, sliding-beam delivery mode has been developed for the Hi-Art treatment system. With this capability, clinicians gain an efficient complement to helical tomotherapy, one that enables fast treatment planning and delivery, while widening the spectrum of patients that can be optimally treated with a sophisticated platform for cancer care.

TomoTherapy, Inc. (Madison, WI, USA) announced that it has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its TomoDirect radiation therapy technology for cancer care. "This is a major milestone for TomoTherapy and, in turn, for cancer centers of all sizes,” said Fred Robertson, CEO of TomoTherapy. "TomoDirect significantly improves the throughput of our system, and widens the TomoTherapy treatment options available for clinical use. Now, more cancer patients can benefit from true, next-generation treatment technology.”

TomoDirect was developed as a complement to helical TomoTherapy, with both modes utilizing the same binary multi-leaf collimator and computed tomography- (CT)-style gantry technology, and sharing a simple, consistent treatment planning and delivery process. The choice of which modality to use for a given case will depend on the nature of the tumor volume and surrounding organs at risk. TomoDirect allows clinicians to choose several discrete angles as well as the optimal modulation level required for delivery. It is expected to provide significant timesavings in both the planning and delivery phases for several clinical scenarios, including whole breast irradiation and palliative treatments.

The TomoDirect system was presented at the annual meetings of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) in Gothenburg, Sweden, on September 14-18, 2008, and the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) in Boston, MA, USA, on September 21-25, 2008.

In addition to the added capabilities offered by TomoDirect, the Hi-Art system's treatment modes are being expanded to include three-dimensional (3D) conformal delivery, thereby providing a comprehensive range of options for all clinical cases.

TomoTherapy develops and markets the TomoTherapy Hi-Art treatment system, an advanced radiation therapy system for the treatment of a wide variety of cancers. The Hi-Art treatment system combines integrated CT imaging with conformal radiation therapy to deliver sophisticated radiation treatments with speed and precision while reducing radiation exposure to surrounding healthy tissue.

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