Enhancements Designed to Make Radiotherapy and Radiosurgery Faster, Easier, More Accurate, and Cost Effective

Continual visual verification that a tumor is being accurately targeted during a radiotherapy treatment is now possible with recent improvements to radiotherapy technology.

This new capability, called intrafraction motion review (IMR), is among the newest developments that Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (Palo Alto, CA, USA) will showcase at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), to be held in Miami Beach (FL, USA) on October 2-4, 2011.

With intrafraction motion review, clinicians can use the imager on a TrueBeam system to monitor continually tumor location during treatment to ensure that the tumor has not moved out of range due to changes in the patient’s breathing pattern. “By introducing intrafraction treatment imaging and combining it with the millisecond response time of the TrueBeam machine, we can minimize the effects of changes in tumor motion during treatment,” said Chris Toth, senior director of marketing for the company.

Varian will exhibit the company’s full range of products for planning and delivering image-guided radiotherapy and proton therapy, with a special emphasis on recent enhancements to its devices and software products, including (1) a motion management interface for the Trilogy machine that enables integration with the Calypso system for tracking the prostate gland during treatment, for greater targeting accuracy. (2) A new user-centric design for the Aria oncology information system, with more personalization to the user, easy-to-follow task-driven workflows, greater automation, and a single clinical management system that accesses both Aria and Varian’s Eclipse treatment planning system from a single unified dashboard. (3) A new Aria iPad application allows clinicians greater mobility. New tools for using different types of images, including magnetic resonance (MR) images, to adapt a patient’s treatment plan if there have been anatomic changes such as tumor shrinkage or weight loss during a multiple-week course of treatment. (4) A new version of Varian’s BrachyVision software for planning brachytherapy treatments is now fully integrated with the Aria oncology information system for seamless management of patient data information. (5) A specially designed treatment couch attachment that enables breast cancer treatments with the patient in the prone position to help minimize radiation exposure to heart and lung tissue, and facilitates the use of RapidArc radiotherapy in the treatment of some breast cancer cases.

Several products in the development pipeline which have been submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review will also be on display, including higher dose delivery rates on the company’s Trilogy and Clinac iX machines, for delivering high dose treatments more quickly to shorten treatment times and increase clinical efficiency.

New contouring tools have been designed to expedite treatment planning by using “smart” software to automatically identify and outline organs and other structures within diagnostic images and that enable clinicians to draw on a library of precontoured images by expert radiation oncologists and use these as a starting point for creating new treatment plans.

“Each of these innovations was designed to enable clinicians to make optimal treatment choices for their patients. By facilitating accurate, efficient treatments, these advances in Varian technology can help clinicians tackle even the most complex cases with confidence,” said Mr. Toth. “Varian is committed to providing cancer treatment professionals with the best possible tools and devices for helping patients fight cancer.”

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