Hybrid Linac-MRI System: New Medical Imaging Combines Medical Linear Accelerators And Magnetic Resonance Imagers

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — Canadian scientists at the University of Alberta's Cross Cancer Institute are developing a new technology that integrates two existing medical devices -- medical linear accelerators, or "linacs," which produce powerful X-rays for treating cancer, and magnetic resonance imagers (MRIs), which are widely used to image tumors in the human body.

The proposed hybrid Linac-MR system promises to help doctors treat certain types of cancer by allowing them to accurately monitor moving tumors in people's lungs and other soft tissues such as the liver or prostate in real time while the radiation treatment is ongoing. Though the new technology is not yet available in the clinic, the Canadian scientists have now demonstrated its feasibility for the near future.

In related research, a group from Stanford University is determining the specifications for how the new technology can be used. Both groups will discuss their latest findings at the 51st meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), which takes place from July 26 - 30, 2009 in Anaheim, California.

source: Science Daily Press`Release

Varian Medical Systems Receives 510(k) Clearance for Fast and Accurate Acuros™ Radiotherapy Treatment Planning Capability

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) today announced that it has received FDA 510(k) clearance for the Acuros™ capability offered initially in its brachytherapy treatment planning system. The Acuros clearance was awarded as part of the market-leading Eclipse™ treatment planning system.

BrachyVision™ Acuros, recently introduced at the American Brachytherapy Society meeting in Toronto, Canada, enables superior dose calculation at unmatched speed. The system enables clinicians to rapidly calculate patient dose with an extremely high level of accuracy*.

"BrachyVision Acuros calculation times tend to average between three and eight minutes depending on the applicator used," says Hosea Mitchell, head of Varian's brachytherapy business unit. "By comparison, the same calculations could take hours or days using the standard Monte Carlo method."

source: Varian Medical Systems

ASTRO issues consensus statement on using APBI to treat breast cancer

Fairfax, Va., July 15, 2009 – The American Society for Radiation Oncology has published a consensus statement outlining patient selection criteria and best practices for the use of accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) outside the context of a clinical trial in the July 15 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.

For decades, whole-breast irradiation (WBI), where radiation is delivered to the whole breast every day for five to eight weeks, has been the standard treatment for patients with early breast cancer treated with breast conserving surgery. WBI has been shown to reduce the risk of recurrence in the affected breast and
increase the likelihood of long-term survival. However, recently there has been growing interest in using APBI, where radiation is used to treat only the part of the breast affected by cancer and the treatment time is decreased from several weeks to four or five days.

APBI has several benefits, including a decreased overall treatment time and a decrease in the radiation delivered to healthy tissue and adjacent organs, but its long-term safety and effectiveness compared to WBI are not yet known and results of randomized trials comparing APBI with WBI will not be available for many years. In the meantime, guidance for use of APBI outside of a clinical trial is needed.

source: ASTRO

Varian Medical Systems Acquires Assets of IKOEmed and IKOEtech; Acquisition to Add Software for Accelerating Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Varian Medical Systems, Inc., (NYSE: VAR) today announced it has acquired the assets of Houston-based IKOEmed and IKOEtech, privately-owned suppliers of software used in the planning of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments. The acquisition enables Varian to offer hospitals and clinics an additional software tool to automate and accelerate the most time-consuming portion of the treatment planning process. Varian is paying approximately $2.2 million plus an additional amount based on achievement of specified milestones to acquire the IKOE assets.

The software is designed to achieve greater than 50 percent reduction in the contouring portion of the radiotherapy treatment planning process, which typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours. It automates the contouring process by matching patient images with pre-contoured images from an expert database created by renowned radiation oncologists. This eliminates the need for clinicians to manually outline between 10 and 20 organs in each of anywhere from 100 to 200 images of a patient's disease site.

source: Varian

Children With Leukemia May Not Need Radiation

Wired PR News – Radiation therapy may not be needed for some children with leukemia. As reported by HealthDay News, a new study suggests that chemotherapy administered alone may lead to longer periods of remission and fewer negative side effects for some children with the disease.

Dr. Ching-Hon Pui, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital oncology chairman and author of the study, is quoted in the report as stating of the findings, “Effective chemotherapy can cure up to 90 percent of all children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia without the use of cranial irradiation… Survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia can now enjoy excellent quality of life, virtually similar to that of the general population.”

More about the study may be found in the June 25th New England Journal of Medicine issue.

source: Wired PR News

Elekta Provides VMAT and Radiosurgery Solutions for New Jersey Health System

CentraState Medical Center (Freehold, New Jersey) has purchased two new state-of-the-art Elekta radiation therapy treatment systems, both with Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT). The first site in the world to have both Elekta Axesse and Elekta Infinity, CentraState will offer the most advanced cancer care available to its patients.

CentraState Medical Center, a part of the CentraState Healthcare System, currently is treating 45 to 50 patients a day – with fluctuations as high as 70 patients per day, all on one treatment unit. When the time came to add another treatment system, CentraState elected to replace another manufacturer’s system and install two new Elekta systems.

Jan Dragotta, Clinical Director, Radiation Oncology, says the decision process took several months and involved a team of CentraState physicians, physicists and administrators.

“In order to determine which technologies, both standard and emerging, had the most value, we completed a complex analysis to determine our current market and potential for growth,” she said. “We all felt radiosurgery and motion management were the areas we wanted to grow, and that was supported by The Advisory Board Company in Washington D.C., which projected that, in the next 10 years, the biggest growth in cancer treatment will occur in radiosurgery.”

source: Elekta

University of Kentucky Brings TomoTherapy Treatment Technology to Brain & Body Radiosurgery Program

MADISON, Wis – June 2, 2009 – TomoTherapy Incorporated (NASDAQ: TOMO) announced today that the University of Kentucky (UK) Chandler Medical Center’s Markey Cancer Center has commenced treating patients with the TomoTherapy® Hi·Art® treatment system, a versatile, CT scanner-based device, which integrates image guidance for increased treatment accuracy and helical radiation therapy delivery for enhanced tumor targeting. The Hi·Art treatment system was selected after a thorough review of technologies and will be extensively utilized in the Markey Cancer Center’s stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) efforts, as part of its new Brain and Body Radiosurgery Program.

Marcus E. Randall, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Medicine at the UK College of Medicine, serves as director of the Brain and Body Radiosurgery Program. According to Dr. Randall, TomoTherapy technology was a natural choice.

“We were looking for a platform that would permit exceptionally accurate treatments while allowing for reasonable throughput of patients,” said Dr. Randall. “We considered all our options, including RapidArc™ and Cyberknife®, but we felt that the dose distributions from TomoTherapy were consistently superior to other platforms. The ability to do imaging at the time of treatment was also a unique advantage, so the decision actually became pretty simple.”

source: TomoTherapy

Radiation Therapy Staffing Rates Remain Stable

Staffing rates for radiation therapy facilities have remained relatively stable within the past two years, according to the 2009 ASRT Radiation Therapy Staffing Survey.

The survey focused on medical facilities that employ full-time radiation therapists. Facilities with a 2009 budget for radiation therapists reported having 4.97 full-time therapists on staff, down only slightly when compared to the 2007 survey, which reported 5.20 full-time therapists.

"It is very interesting to see that despite the downturn in the economy, the number of open full-time employee positions for therapists and dosimetrists has remained relatively steady over the past two years," said Myke Kudlas, ASRT's vice president of education and research. "This may represent regional differences in demand, a trend we have seen in many imaging specialties."

The survey also showed the vacancy rate for radiation therapists has slightly increased to 7.6 percent from 5.4 percent in 2007.

source: ASRT

Short-course radiotherapy effective for painful vertebral bone metastases

Philadelphia, Penn. – A single high dose of radiotherapy is as effective in relieving the pain from vertebral bone metastases as 10 smaller treatments, according to new research from the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) that will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Orlando on May 31, 2009. RTOG, an NCI-funded national clinical trials group, is a clinical research component of the American College of Radiology.

RTOG researchers previously reported that breast and prostate cancer patients with painful bone metastases who received a single radiotherapy treatment of 8 Gy had the same pain relief and narcotic use three months after treatment as patients who received 10 radiotherapy treatments each consisting of 2 Gy for a total of 30 Gy. They also found that patients who received the 8 Gy regimen reported fewer side effects, although those patients did have to be retreated more often than patients who received the higher dose.

source: University of Michigan Health System

Novel Targeted Radiation Therapy From Immunomedics Produces Objective Responses in Pancreatic Cancer

ORLANDO, Fla., May 31, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Immunomedics, Inc. (Nasdaq:IMMU), a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing monoclonal antibodies to treat cancer and other serious diseases, today reported a 30% objective response rate in 10 evaluable patients with inoperable, advanced pancreatic cancer treated with a novel targeted radiation therapy developed by the Company in combination with gemcitabine. Interim results from the ongoing Phase Ib dose-escalation study were presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology.

"Targeted radiation therapy is well suited for solid cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, and our data, though limited, corroborate this notion," remarked Cynthia L. Sullivan, President and CEO. "In light of the fact that there aren't many viable treatment options for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, we believe clivatuzumab tetraxetan labeled with yttrium-90 is in a good position to become the first radioimmunotherapeutic agent for pancreatic cancer therapy, and we currently intend to develop it through commercialization on our own," continued Ms. Sullivan.

source: GlobeNewswire