• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

TomoTherapy Leads the Industry in CT Image-Guided Patient Treatments

Posted on: Monday, 7 November 2005, 12:01 CST

TomoTherapy Clinical Centers around the world have performed an unprecedented 125,000 CT image-guided radiation treatments for patients with cancer. In just over two and a half years, TomoTherapy's clinical centers have performed CT imaging before treatment delivery in upwards of 95% of their cases treated with the TomoTherapy HI-ART System(R). "This is unmatched in the industry," said Dr. Fred Robertson, TomoTherapy CEO. "Our customers are not only finding it helpful to image directly before treating patients, but in many cases, they believe it is crucial to the overall treatment outcome."

By using Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT), clinicians are able to target and track tumors with greater confidence and accuracy. Dr. Daniel Petereit, Radiation Oncologist at Rapid City Regional Hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota was an early TomoTherapy adopter and is seeing the benefits of on-board IGRT on a daily basis. "IGRT helps insure accurate treatment delivery and permits one to assess how tumor response has altered daily treatment delivery. This ultimately enhances the therapeutic ratio since maximal doses are delivered to the tumor while sparing adjacent normal tissue."

Dr. Bin Teh, one of TomoTherapy's more recent users at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, agrees. "With image guidance, the delivery of radiation to the tumor is simply more precise. I can use smaller treatment margins, avoiding the delivery of high dose radiation to large volumes of normal tissue, which allows dose escalation to the tumor target to enable improved treatment outcomes."

Dr. Petereit adds, "Image guidance using megavoltage CT's (MVCT's) as part of the TomoTherapy delivery system has changed the way we treat, monitor and alter radiation treatments." The TomoTherapy HI-ART System was designed without previous platform or technology constraints, offering a true paradigm shift in design. Unlike other devices on the market today, which may offer separate or add-on imaging capabilities, the HI-ART System's imaging capability was inherent in the original concept. The integrated design makes the process simple and accurate, greatly facilitating both IMRT and IGRT.

From research intensive institutions to community-based cancer centers, image guidance is providing new treatment opportunities. "I believe that TomoTherapy has allowed us to apply IMRT and image guidance to a wider range of patients then we would previously and there are cases that we would not have tried to treat without TomoTherapy's image guidance capabilities," said Dr. Timothy Holmes of St. Agnes Cancer Center.

About TomoTherapy Incorporated

TomoTherapy Incorporated (www.tomotherapy.com) has developed a revolutionary new medical system to deliver conformal radiation therapy to cancer patients. The TomoTherapy technology was born out of collaboration with the University of Wisconsin. TomoTherapy is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, where it employs over 300 people.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category