Five Proton Therapy Treatment Rooms Plus System Upgrade Deployed at Scripps Proton Therapy Center

An upgrade of a proton system will improve workflow at a US proton therapy center, enabling the use of the fixed-beam treatment rooms as well as more diverse patient-positioning devices. Moreover the new technology is designed to enhance the quality of images generated by the system’s integrated imager.

Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, CA, US) has completed commissioning of five treatment rooms at the Scripps Proton Therapy Center (San Diego, CA, USA) earlier in 2014, and has upgraded the ProBeam system software. “We anticipate that the upgrade to ProBeam 2.5 will, by improving our treatment workflow and making available our two fixed-beam rooms, substantially increase our ability to provide clinical services to a growing and diverse patient population,” said Carl Rossi, MD, medical director of the Scripps Proton Therapy Center. “We expect it will be a significant improvement in our facility’s capabilities and will be an example of the continued development and flexibility inherent in the ProBeam treatment system.”


“We were very pleased with the response of the Scripps clinical team when we turned over the fifth treatment room after commissioning,” said Dr. Moataz Karmalawy, general manager of Varian’s particle therapy division. “Those who had experience with the commissioning process at other centers using other systems told us that this was the fastest ramp-up they had seen.”

Varian is also pleased to announce that testing conducted recently at Scripps has demonstrated that the cone-beam CT system, currently used on all TrueBeam machines, is compatible with ProBeam technology. High-quality images have been generated using the system at Scripps, and this functionality will be made available to customers in 2015. High quality kV imaging is already in clinical use.

The ProBeam system, which will be on display at the meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) held in San Francisco (CA, USA), in October 2014, incorporates Varian’s unique Dynamic Peak scanning technology for intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT), robotic patient positioning tools, and a comprehensive suite of motion management tools. It incorporates an integrated 2-D and 3-D imager for real-time image guidance, as well as the option of planning and managing treatments using Varian’s Eclipse and ARIA software systems.

Varian proton therapy technology is also in place at the Rinecker Proton Therapy Center in Munich (Germany) and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. Varian has contracts to install ProBeam systems at seven additional centers at the University of Maryland in Baltimore; Emory University in Atlanta (GA, USA); Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio (USA); University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas (USA); KFMC-King Fahd Medical City in Saudi Arabia; PTC in St. Petersburg (Russia); and National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Related Links:
Varian Medical Systems
Scripps Proton Therapy Center