by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | October 29, 2018
From the October 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Lawson stressed that the new feature is very different than conventional gating solutions. It will use an algorithm to adjust the beam to follow a moving target throughout its motion cycle, in real-time.
Brainlab Elements Cranial SRS software
Brainlab
Brainlab released a newer version of its Elements Multiple Brain Mets SRS treatment planning software for focused stereotactic radiosurgery. The updated software provides new treatment strategies to treat brain metastases and adds new contouring and response assessment tools to increase utilization, said Bogdan Valcu, director of clinical research at Brainlab.
The previous version of Elements Multiple Brain Mets SRS was only planning for a single fraction radiosurgery, or the treating oncologist would have to specify one fractionation strategy, Valcu explained. With the new version of the software, you can combine multiple strategies, with one tumor receiving a single fraction and one receiving multiple fractions.
“We just want to provide more flexibility within this application, enabling everything from single fraction radiosurgery to fractionated SRS prescriptions customized to the individual patient disease and irrespective of tumor size,” Valcu said. “Using Elements Contrast Clearance Analysis, we can now detect earlier whether or not patients are failing therapy and require re-treatment. Timely re-treatment is critical for maximizing survival profiles for brain metastasis patients and so is the ability to distinguish between tumor and radiation effect.”
The spine is another key target for Brainlab, and in March 2017 the company released Elements Spine SRS. First patient treatments began in Argentina, Germany and Italy followed by the first patient treatment in the U.S. in August of 2018.
Elements Spine SRS works with CT and MR scans to calculate the clinical target volume using international spine radiosurgery consortium consensus guidelines, and takes less time using Monte Carlo simulations.
“The software offers automatic treatment planning, which helps raise overall plan quality with consistent adherence to desired treatment protocol. In a half hour clinicians can go from zero to treatment plan,” Valcu said. “Planning steps that would have taken clinicians two to three hours to perform in the past are now performed in under 10 minutes and physician involvement time is reduced to just a few minutes.”
