April 29, 2015 — Brainlab expanded on its “Elements” strategy for treatment of brain and spine tumors with the introduction of automated stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) planning tools. Announced at the third European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) Forum in Barcelona, Spain, the SRS tools enable on-the-fly generation of consistent treatment plans for volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) delivery.
Introduced in 2013, the Elements strategy uses indication-specific focused software applications aimed at enhancing the workflow for difficult to treat indications in the brain and spine.
Previously introduced Elements for cranial radiosurgery have focused on enhancing image fusion, distortion correction of various magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences, interactive segmentation of tumors and vascular structures, fibertracking, dose review and automatic segmentation of critical structures. Adaptive Hybrid Surgery tools have helped to simulate and evaluate the feasibility of radiosurgery treatments at different resection levels during surgery.
Radiosurgery treatment planning for cranial indications, however, remains a manual iterative process that is highly user-dependent. One of the new Elements tools Brainlab introduced automatically generates highly conformal treatment plans for a variety of indications, locations, sizes, shapes and fractionation schemes, all with the click of a button. Instead of choosing between different delivery techniques, the Element algorithm produces a Meaningful Use (MU)-optimized plan for delivery as volumetric, intensity modulated arc. For treatment of spherical targets, such as singular metastases, or small functional targets, such as trigeminal neuralgia, another new Element has been designed around the challenges of these specific treatments.
Spinal radiosurgery represents another challenging treatment with multiple complex and manual steps. In addition to streamlining the fusion and segmentation steps, another VMAT-based automatic planning Element for spinal SRS can generate complex yet highly conformal plans. This tool is specifically designed to address the visualization and optimization requirements for stereotactic treatments for spine indications.
For more information: www.brainlab.com
April 18, 2024 
