By Andy Choi
Accuray plans to showcase the TomoTherapy Radiation Therapy Treatment System and CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System at the Joint American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and Canadian organization of Medical Physicists (COMP) Meet for the year 2011.
Apart from showcasing these two surgical systems, Accuray will be entertaining a combined symposium that throws light on the best practices of quality assurance in radiation oncology. The AAPM/COMP meet will be organised in Vancouver between 31st of July and 4th of August.
CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System
The symposium on ‘Best Quality Assurance Programs for Today’s Radiation Oncology, organised by Accuray is scheduled on the 1st of August. Sonja Dietrich, the chief of clinical physics at Stanford University School of Medicine, will be giving a presentation at the symposium about the various protocols and recommendations covered by the task group TG-135. This task group is set up exclusively to set the QA standards in robotic radiosurgery. Another presentation by SasaMutic, chief of clinical medical physics at the Washington University School of Medicine, will focus on the application of system engineering principles to radiotherapy QA and quality compliance.
As many as 60 topics related to CyberKnife and Tomo Therapy system will be presented at the expo. Some of the topics are ‘Helical TomoTherapy Commissioning and QA of Twin Peaks Linac versus Earlier Models’. This study was conducted at the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California. The study revolved around assessing the Twin Peak linear accelerator in TomoTherapy System against the previously used system. The study revealed no changes in the characteristics of the beam even after nine months of clinical use; hence, the new linear system was superior in terms of stability over the previously used system.Another presentation will be on research on the Treatment of Endometrial Cervical Cancer using the CyberKnife system conducted at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. The aim of the research was to establish the CyberKnife system as an alternative to the conventional brachytherapy method. Another research related to the CyberKnife system was in the treatment of Oral Tongue Cancer in the early stages. The CyberKnife System was found to be effective in delivering the conformal dose in five fractions, keeping the radiation level very low and putting the patients at ease Authors assess that the treatment period will be 18 min/fraction.
Source: http://www.accuray.com/