“We have a centralized secure database, a single point of storage and unmatched computing power, which enables rapid creation of very sophisticated treatment plans,” says Dr. Fred Roberston, the company’s president and CEO. “Our system has a built-in machine and patient specific quality assurance.”

Robertson says customers are using the system for applications of stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic radiation therapy and stereotactic body radiation therapy. TomoTherapy has a patented binary multi-leaf collimator, ensuring dose conformity and homogeneity.

“There’s a lot of evidence in the medical literature that this design reduces toxicity and side effects and enables radiotherapy with a radiobiologic advantage, which we believe ultimately translates to improved quality of life for our patients and for cancer survivors,” says Robertson.

With TomoTherapy, patients can be imaged daily, enabling clinicians to offer adaptive therapy, says Robertson. Clinicians can make adjustments based on changes in the anatomy and have a more comprehensive picture of the dose the tumor already received.

TomoTherapy is also advantageous for hypofractionation, or delivering short courses of high dose radiation, a growing industry trend.

“Daily 3-D image guidance is critically important with hypofractionated dosing because when you’re using larger fractions, they have to be delivered correctly and with extreme precision,” says Robertson. “Many physicians would agree that hypofractionated radiation therapy is really only possible with very high quality 3-D volumetric image guided capabilities.”

Advances in image guidance technology for radiotherapy are moving the industry toward personalized patient care and have “really opened up the possibility of being able to personalize the prescription to most effectively treat each patient’s tumor,” says Robertson.

Enhancing the process
The complexity of the radiotherapy equipment and the overall treatment process is a challenge end-users and OEMs face today.

“If you go to a typical console of a radiotherapy device these days, it can be overwhelming just walking up and seeing numerous monitors and all of the bells and whistles you see there,” says Karmanos’ Burmeister. “It’s difficult for the therapists who operate these machines to pay attention to the patient and to everything that’s going on with the machine. These machines are doing very complicated things in terms of imaging and delivery with respect to what they used to do.”

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