TomoHD is an all-purpose treatment system that offers both helical delivery and TomoDirect as standard. "The benefit is that you can treat a broader patient population with a single machine," TomoTherapy's Kevin O'Malley told medicalphysicsweb.
TomoHD incorporates a range of functional enhancements said to improve usability and performance, as well as infrastructure advances that maximize uptime and operational efficiency. Other features include large touch-screen positioning control panels, a hands-free patient unload feature, plus a streamlined design that enables the TomoHD to be sited in smaller bunkers than the company's Hi.Art treatment system.
Truck stop
The TomoMobile, meanwhile, released last month and billed as "the industry's first relocatable radiation therapy solution" is basically a Hi.Art treatment system in a really big truck. Innovative designs, such as expandable side-wings that accommodate lead shielding, and additional shielding around the system itself, enable the Hi.Art to be set-up at a clinical site and up and running within a week.
The idea, says TomoTherapy, is to enable customers to begin treating patients during construction of a new facility or alleviate temporary backlogs, or for permanent placement in centres that are unable to expand their facility. The first TomoMobile is based in Oklahoma, and has just started treating patients, while a second system will be going to a site in Arizona. O'Malley notes that, in the future, the truck could be adapted to accommodate the TomoHD.
With a look to the future, the company was also demonstrating its "Advanced Delivery" mode on the ASTRO show floor. Developed in collaboration with the University Clinic Heidelberg in Germany, the work-in-progress Advanced Delivery combines dynamic jaw motion and dynamic couch motion. O'Malley pointed out that the TomoHD is equipped to accommodate this technology when it is released.
The ability to change both jaw width (and thus field width) and couch speed throughout a treatment can reduce treatment times by between 40 and 75%, for example, by speeding up the couch motion through low-dose regions and slowing it down during high-dose delivery.
Advanced Delivery should also improve plan quality by reducing the dose penumbra. This can be achieved by keeping the jaws narrow at the edges of the treatment field and opening them up in the middle, helping to protect nearby critical structures, explained TomoTherapy product manager Theresa Bonds. "We've increased the quality and reduced the treatment time," she said.