Corporate News

ELEKTA MARCH 2023

Gamma Knife Esprit

With over 50 years of real-world Leksell Gamma Knife evidence, Esprit is trusted to continue to lead the way in intracranial radiosurgery - transforming treatment protocols and supporting clinicians and researchers to drive the standard of care forward.

With more than three times the publications of all other technologies, Gamma Knife continues to set the standard to which all other are measured to.

ACCURAY March 7, 2023

20th anniversary of the CyberKnife activity at the San Bortolo Hospital in Vicenza, Italy #11

Twenty years ago, the first patients in Europe were treated with the CyberKnife® System. Specifically, at the San Bortolo Hospital in Vicenza, Italy. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the CyberKnife technology installation, we asked Dr. Umberto Fornezza and Dr. Zeno Perini 20 questions. How has treatment with the CyberKnife System evolved? What does their clinical radiosurgery program look like today? What are the benefits of treating large lesions or AVMs with the CyberKnife System? What is the legacy of Prof. Federico Colombo? Want to know more? Watch this video here

RTsafe MARCH 2023

A need for 3D evaluation in single iso multi-focal SRS

Single iso multi-focal SRS treatments require high geometrical accuracy in dose delivery. When treating small lesions, especially the ones that are located far from the isocenter, the geometric uncertainty of the final dose deposition is related, among other parameters, to the uncertainties of the patient immobilization and treatment positioning. Thus, patient positioning uncertainty during treatment introduces significant deviations in the cumulative delivered dose distribution, as compared to the intended one.

VARIAN MARCH 2023

Around the World with HyperArc Radiosurgery for Benign Indications

Cancer care centers across the globe are taking advantage of Varian’s HyperArc® high-definition linac-based radiotherapy for frameless cranial radiosurgery to efficiently treat benign lesions of the brain using flexible fractionation schedules tailored to each patient’s condition. In a recent article, Varian highlighted HyperArc programs at centers in Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia.  We present some of the highlights here.

ELEKTA MARCH 2023

Elekta Unity

The difference that Elekta Unity brings is clear: it allows you to see what you could never see before. Combining best-in-class, diagnostic quality MR imaging with a Linear Accelerator we have pushed the boundaries of what is possible. No other comparable system can match our clarity and precision or the depth of our insights. But this is just the start. Elekta Unity has the potential to change the face of Radiation Therapy forever.

ELEKTA OCTOBER 2022

Elekta: Celebrating 50 years of innovation

This year Elekta celebrates 50 years of innovation as a company and marks this anniversary by continuing to innovate. In May this year, they introduced their new stereotactic radiosurgery system, Elekta Esprit*, at the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) 2022 and presented it again at the ISRS 2022 congress in Milan in June. Based on decades of unrivalled Leksell Gamma Knife development, Elekta Esprit evolves to the next level and honours the legacy of Lars Leksell’s innovation and dedication to provide gentler brain treatment.

ACCURAY OCTOBER 2022

Enhancing and expanding the CyberKnife® treatment platform for the field of radiosurgery

The CyberKnife® System is highly precise and versatile, it is capable of delivering non-invasive treatments with sub-millimeter precision and accuracy anywhere in the body. In radiotherapy, we identify two main fields, known as radiation oncology and radiosurgery, including spine indications.  Radiosurgery to the brain and spine are the most challenging to treat, and we want to provide neurosurgeons the tools to treat these indications with greater confidence and reproducibility. Our goal is to enhance and expand the CyberKnife treatment platform for the field of radiosurgery, enabling neurosurgeons to take advantage of the high precision that the CyberKnife System is capable of.

RT SAFE OCTOBER 2022

End-to-End evaluation of SGRT systems during commissioning and periodic QA

In advanced Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) treatments, the role of the Surface Guidance systems is very important and becomes vital for the safe and efficient implementation of each clinical procedure. The accurate and precise patient positioning in the treatment couch for a single fraction or hypofractionated SRS applications, as well as the accurate patient monitoring during the dose delivery, can be achieved with advanced Surface Guidance Radiation Therapy (SGRT) techniques minimizing patient dose derived from x-ray, Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), kV and MV imaging. SGRT systems combine high-end technology with sophisticated software aiming to improve the treatment outcome and make more efficient the SRS treatment protocol. Specifically, the most recent integrated SGRT systems provide surface optical imaging with cutting-edge optical cameras combined with mounted light sources detecting the patient’s 3D surface structure.          

VARIAN OCTOBER 2022

Utah’s Intermountain Health Care Expands Access to State-of-the-Art Radiosurgery using HyperArc

Intermountain Health Care is Utah’s largest healthcare system, serving more cancer patients than any other provider in the state of Utah. With nine clinics, it covers the state’s main population centers along the nearly 400-mile stretch of Interstate 15 from Logan in the north to St. George in the south. Until two years ago, the Intermountain network had one dedicated radiosurgery platform, located in Salt Lake City. For the southernmost patients needing radiosurgery for multitarget SRS, that could mean an eight-hour drive round trip for care—until a TrueBeam® radiotherapy system in St. George was outfitted with HyperArc® high-definition radiotherapy.

VARIAN APRIL 2022

HyperArc® High-Definition Radiosurgery from Varian Helps Thousands of Patients with Brain Cancer and Other Intracranial Diseases

Some 10,000 patients have now received HyperArc treatment at 170 medical centers around the world

Since it was first deployed in the Fall of 2017, HyperArc™ high-definition radiosurgery from Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company, has been installed at over 170 treatment sites around the world and has been used to target over 30,000 lesions and tumors for some 10,000 patients with brain cancer or other types of intracranial diseases.

ELEKTA FEBRUARY 2022

Elekta’s new Leksell Vantage™ Stereotactic System, adapted for Leksell Gamma Knife®, also now available for patients and clinicians in the U.S.

A perfect merger of the best in stereotactic neurosurgery with the best in stereotactic radiosurgery, Leksell® Vantage™ stereotactic headframe is the new partner of Leksell Gamma Knife®. This represents a significant leap forward frame-based Gamma Knife radiosurgery planning and treatment delivery. The simple, patient-friendly design and non-metallic composition of the Vantage frame provides capabilities not only to significantly increase patient comfort, but also to enhance target visualization and positioning as well as treatment accuracy. Vantage received CE Mark in 2020 and was cleared for use in the U.S. in late 2021.

The frame system and associated CT and MR imaging accessories minimize issues with radiofrequency [RF] heating in MRI planning scans and image artifacts in both MR and CT planning studies. In MR planning, specifically, this translates into the potential for improved image quality for stereotactic treatment planning.

This solution, together with the Leksell Gamma Knife® Lightning treatment planning optimizer, is making it possible to treat patients faster, in turn making Gamma Knife radiosurgery accessible to greater numbers of patients.

Since its recent introduction, Vantage for Gamma Knife has been used to treat hundreds of patients at Gamma Knife radiosurgery centers across the globe. For more information, please visit Vantage for Gamma Knife.

RT SAFE FEBRUARY 2022

Evaluating tumor delineation accuracy and repeatability in SRS: An innovative methodology for End-to-End QA in MRI-RT applications

The adaption of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in modern Radiation Therapy (RT) applications, such as Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS), has paved the way for more accurate treatments due to its superiority in soft-tissue contrast against Computed Tomography (CT) imaging and its ability for functional imaging. In the last decade, the usage of MRI in RT has an unprecedented increase either for tumor and Organs-At-Risk (OARs) delineation or on Image-Guided radiotherapy (IGRT) techniques. MRI in intracranial SRS has an essential role during dose planning in combination with CT or as a standalone imaging modality (e.g., Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac-based SRS, proton therapy). Moreover, advanced hybrid RT systems, such as MR-linacs and proton-guided modalities, have been designed to perform MR-guided RT treatments in real-time. MRI-based online plan adaptation between sessions at fractionated and hypo-fractionated schemes, as well as during a session, have been proven to improve the clinical outcome.

ACCURAY & BRAINLAB FEBRUARY 2022

Accuray and Brainlab Virtual Launch and Symposium