The Main Event
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Accuray’s theatrical flourish
08.30 PDT Tuesday: At 11am yesterday, upwards of 200 delegates gathered around the Accuray booth to find out what the Sunnyvale, CA manufacturer had been keeping under wraps since the ASTRO trade show opened its doors Sunday (see “Getting it together”, 28 October). A slick opening pitch from president and CEO Euan Thomson gave way to a swirling soundtrack from British supergroup Coldplay (a dubious choice in this correspondent’s opinion) and then up went the curtain to reveal the 2008 model of the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System. The only thing missing was the dry ice, but a neat bit of theatre all the same.
For those who don’t know, the CyberKnife is a radiotherapy system developed primarily for radiosurgery applications and comprised of a compact linac incorporated into an ultraprecise, computer-driven robotic arm (sub-mm accuracy). Patients lie on a couch while the robot positions the linac around them, an arrangement that permits the delivery of many fields from a range of source positions and angles, with robotic arm trajectories and beam weighting optimized iteratively by dedicated software. On-the-fly image guidance technology automatically detects and corrects for tumour and patient movement, adjusting the robot trajectory in real-time throughout treatment.
Innovation being what it is, however, the 2008 model of the CyberKnife incorporates a range of enhanced functionality. Thomson highlighted four specific advances:
• the Iris variable aperture collimator, which can automatically alter the size of its opening to let radiation beams of 12 discrete sizes pass through;
• an 800 MU/min linac that’s capable of delivering higher dose rates to a tumour, in turn reducing treatment times;
• the Sequential Optimization Planning Tool, which will be integrated into the MultiPlan Treatment Planning System to enable users “to optimize their treatment objectives based on each unique clinical situation using prioritized clinical objectives, instead of the traditional trial-and-error setting of various constraints to narrow in on an optimized treatment”;
• the RoboCouch patient positioning system with a seated load feature that offers “easier loading and unloading capabilities and provides added comfort for wheelchair bound or disabled patients”.
Watch out for a more detailed update on Accuray’s CyberKnife technology on the main pages of medicalphysicsweb next week.
