Royal Philips is teaming up with MIM Software to improve radiation treatment planning.

The Dutch-based healthcare entity plans to combine its integrated portfolio of CT and MR imaging platforms, as well as its intelligent treatment planning software, with the practical imaging, automation, and data analysis solutions offered by MIM Software to create more streamlined approaches to treatment planning for clinicians.

"Today, adaptive therapy planning can still be a relatively manual process. We expect this partnership to contribute to our goal of enabling an adaptive, context-aware workflow, where the clinicians have the images and data they need, in ether application, at their fingertips," Ardie Ermers, general manager of radiation oncology at Philips, told HCB News. "The intention of this collaboration is to add value to the Philips Pinnacle treatment planning system and other future radiation oncology software Philips develops, by integrating leading partners in an ecosystem that enables efficient workflows."

The partnership follows the recent unveiling of Philips’ new radiation oncology portfolio, which includes its Ingenia Ambition/Elition MR-RT and Big Bore RT imaging systems, and Pinnacle Evolution treatment planning software.

Equipped with Philips’ BlueSeal fully-sealed magnet, the Ingenia Ambition MR-RT Imaging system is the only MR scanner capable of performing helium-free operations, decreasing chances for potentially long and expensive disruptions and virtually eradicating the risks associated with the unpredictable supply of the costly element.

“Normally, there’s 1500 to 2000 liters," Martijn Hartjes, head of MR product marketing for global marketing BIU MR for Philips, told HCB News at RSNA 2018. We've reduced that amount by 99.5 percent so now there’s only seven liters. It’s completely sealed so it cannot come out. It gets shipped from the factory with helium in it and that’s it. The customer never has to worry about helium anymore.”

Ingenia Elition, which received FDA clearance last June, is a 3.0T MR scanner with two clinical applications, Philips Compressed SENSE and 3D APT. Tapping into its features, clinicians can perform exams up to 50 percent faster with greater diagnostic confidence and the ability to improve the patient experience.

The new Big Bore RT system for CT scanning, which debuted at ASTRO, is equipped with new iterative model reconstruction (IMR) technology that reconstructs images with fine detail in less than three minutes, providing greater clinical accuracy in the detection and delineation of small, subtle structures, and better image quality with advanced auto-segmentation. A dedicated oncology simulator, it enhances confident decision-making across all stages of scanning, planning and treatment through improved accuracy for lesion identification, tissue density calculation and segmentation.

The collaboration also builds upon a number of other partnerships orchestrated by Philips, including one with Sun Nuclear to integrate its suite of PlanIQ software into Philip’s Pinnacle treatment planning platform, which is equipped with advanced automated tools for reducing the total time required to create IMRT or VMAT plans.

“As a leader in radiation oncology quality assurance, Sun Nuclear has developed a technology in PlanIQ that can determine, based on the patient’s anatomy and location of the tumor, the lower limits of radiation that could be feasibly achieved for that patient’s treatment,” Todd Deterding, marketing director of radiation oncology solutions at Philips, told HCB News at the time. “This information easily integrates into our Pinnacle3 system to provide the best possible starting place for auto-planning in order to begin the process of creating a high-quality plan.”

MIM Software, meanwhile, is the designer of MIM Maestro, a radiation oncology package that provides a set of oncology solutions for automating clinical workflow, including image registration, auto-contouring and dose evaluation.

In addition to this solution, it recently got the go-ahead from the FDA to launch its MIM SurePlan MRT software for molecular radiotherapy dosimetry, allowing clinicians to measure the absorbed dose from MRT for individual patients. Many are unable to perform this task due to the lack of available SPECT images and tools but may soon be able to with the continued growth of MRT applications.

“Its most common uses include treatment for neuroendocrine (Lu-177 Dotatate), thyroid (I-131 NaI), and pheochromocytoma/paraganglioma (I-131 iobenguane),” Aaron Nelson, M.D., chief medical officer of MIM Software, told HCB News at the time. “There are many others that are showing value, but aren't FDA-cleared, such as PSMA for metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer.”

Philips says its new found relationship with MIM Software goes hand-in-hand with its objective to bring together and offer the best solutions for fighting cancer.

"Developing partnerships in radiation oncology treatment planning is an important part of our strategy to ensure we offer integrated, best-in-class solutions to our customers," said Ermers. "By integrating leading partners into our ecosystem we’re able to provide more efficient workflows to clinicians."