A Canadian public-private partnership is investing millions of dollars to develop one of the world's first integrated, full-scale MRI-guided radiation therapy units, according to its creators.

The Canadian government said Wednesday it would invest $2.5 million (Canadian dollars) to develop a prototype device that uses an MRI scanner to guide radiation therapy in real-time.

The so-called Magnetic Resonance Real-time Guided Radiation Therapy, or MRrtgRT, could help doctors get 3-D images of the treatment site, to better target tumors using a linear accelerator.
This is one of the first times the two technologies will be completely integrated together into one full-scale, clinical machine, its developers say.

"Typically, they've had to put those machines 10-12 meters (33-39 feet) apart, but our researchers have found a way to (get around that)," Haydon Dewes, a spokesman for Alberta Health Services, one of the collaborators on the project, told DOTmed News.

Building the new system is a joint endeavor that unites the federal government, academia, a non-profit, private industry and provincial health officials.

In additional to the federal money, the project's receiving $250,000 from the province of Alberta and $2.15 million from the Alberta Cancer Foundation. Alberta Health Services and industry partners Paramed and ASG Superconductors are putting down $1.1 million, according to the Western Economic Diversification Canada, a federal funding group. (All figures in Canadian dollars. In terms of conversion, the U.S. dollar is worth about two cents more than the Canadian dollar.)

The device will be developed and tested by University of Alberta researchers and Alberta Health Services' Cross Cancer Institute. Once complete, Paramed and ASG Superconductors would commercialize it.

But it's is still years away from the clinic, Dewes said. First, the team has to use its new investments to build a full-body-sized working prototype. Once it's finished, it next has to go through clinical trials. Roughly, the team is hoping to treat patients with the device in the next two and a half to three years, Dewes said. Full commercialization could be five to six years out.

However, a head-size prototype already exists, and was developed three years ago by medical physicists with the Cross Cancer Institute and staff at the University of Alberta's oncology department.

"This leading-edge technology has been conceived, designed and realized in Alberta, by Albertans, for Albertans and the rest of the world," Dr. Anthony Fields, professor emeritus at the university's oncology department, and ex-vice president of cancer care with Alberta Health Services, said in a statement. "This is an exciting development that has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of radiation therapy for cancer patients."

The technology is one of a few MRI-guided radiation therapy systems underway. IMRIS, a maker of interventional MRIs, announced last October it was working with Varian Medical Systems to develop an MRI unit to guide its TrueBeam radiotherapy system. In this multi-room system, the MRI unit would move in and out of the therapy suite on demand, according to an IMRIS release last year.

And ViewRay Inc., an Ohio-based company, received Food and Drug Administration clearance earlier this year for planning software associated with its in-development, integrated MRI-guided radiation therapy system.

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