TomoHD by Tomotherapy Inc.
November 24, 2009 - Radiation therapy treatment times can be reduced by up to 66 percent when using tomotherapy advanced radiation delivery techniques.
These findings, from the study "Dynamic Jaws and Dynamic Couch in Helical TomoTherapy," were published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics (the Red Journal) on November 11, 2009.
The researcher team, led by Dr. Florian Sterzing of the department of radiation oncology, University Clinic Heidelberg, set out to explore the benefits of the Advanced TomoTherapy Delivery Technique. This delivery technique relies on a dynamic collimator that can automatically adjust the size of the radiation beam to optimize dosage at the target and spare surrounding healthy tissue.
Another key component is the patient-positioning couch that can be designed to accelerate treatment time by moving faster between target tumors or in those areas that do not require high doses of radiation.
The study concluded that with the combination of these two research advancements, they were able to develop treatment plans that indicated significantly shortened treatment times and improved quality of the treatment plan.
"Our experience treating patients with TomoTherapy led us to believe that the techniques we explored in our research could result in more accurate and faster treatments," said Dr. Sterzing. "While we limited our study to nasopharyngeal cancer applications, we believe that these techniques also would have great value in treating cancers throughout the body, particularly cancers of the prostate and those involving multiple metastases."
Tomotherapy Inc. launched the TomoHD treatment system the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) earlier this month. TomoHD is designed to accommodate the delivery technique.
For more information: www.tomotherapy.com
May 03, 2024 
