by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | October 29, 2018
From the October 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“Our energy consumption is about 30 percent of a multiple-room cyclotron,” Spotts said.
Radiation oncology
Like proton therapy, radiation oncology companies have shown greater interest in simplifying their systems while also providing greater specificity. What follows is a look at some of the newest software and hardware solutions from companies in the conventional radiation oncology space.
Accuray
At this month’s ASTRO annual meeting, Accuray will be introducing the CyberKnife VOLO optimizer for the CyberKnife robotic radiation therapy system. The system simplifies the process of creating treatment plans using a new next-generation optimization algorithm, said Corey Lawson, vice president of product strategy at Accuray.
“It’s a state-of-the-art optimizer that resets the bar for user experience,” Lawson said.
Lawson said VOLO should reduce optimization time, or the time to do calculations, by 95 percent. So, a lung cancer case that may have taken close to an hour with the previous optimizer will now take a few minutes. It will also reduce delivery time by more than 20 percent.
Faster treatment planning means clinicians can try different ways of planning a case with much greater efficiency, Lawson said.
“With the ability to push a plan harder than ever before, will likely come the ability to get better plans than previously thought possible with the CyberKnife System,” Lawson said. “We expect our clinical partners to readily adopt this new technology because of the clinical workflow and plan quality benefits that will be quickly realized.”
Accuray also recently introduced CTrue IR imaging on its Radixact Treatment Delivery System. CTrue IR integrates a new iterative reconstruction algorithm which improves soft tissue contrast, while also reducing noise in scanned image sets.
"It does all of this with the same low-dose imaging and fast scan time we've always had,” Lawson said. “Furthermore, it is not affected by metal artifacts, nor in larger patients, the obscuring effects of electron starvation. We are truly improving user experience and clinical utility with this new release for our Radixact System.”
The company is also planning to show Synchrony motion compensation on the Radixact Treatment Delivery System, which is 510(k) pending at the time of this article.
