Health & Fitness
Health and Fitness
Health and Fitness
Wed, June 16, 2010
Tue, June 15, 2010 TomoTherapy Focuses on Benefits of Adaptive Radiation Therapy at the AAMD 35th Annual Meeting
MADISON, WI--(Marketwire - June 15, 2010) - [ TomoTherapy Incorporated ] (
Adaptive radiation therapy -- the ability to assess changes in a patient's anatomy or tumor at any point during the treatment course and adjust the treatment plan as necessary -- has long been a goal in cancer treatment. However, conventional radiation therapy has lacked an integrated 3D imaging system that enables clinicians to compare up-to-date patient scans with the original treatment planning image.
Steve Jacobs, CMD, RT(T), and Lori Ann Foley, RT(T), of TomoTherapy's clinical applications team, delivered a presentation Monday titled "Adaptive Radiotherapy as Applied to a Ring Gantry Platform." The presentation focused on how the TomoTherapy system's diagnostic CT scanner-like design integrates imaging and dose calculation into the treatment process, allowing for daily 3D volumetric imaging immediately before treatment, as well as calculation of daily dose delivery. With daily dose delivery data, clinicians can then adjust the treatment plan in the event of any discrepancies with the original plan or changes in patient anatomy.
"There is no doubt that patient positioning is critically important for ensuring that radiation is hitting the appropriate target, particularly as increasingly complex treatment plans are utilized and treatments call for higher doses per fraction," said Jacobs, who also represented TomoTherapy in a panel discussion on arc therapy. "Equally important, however, is being able to verify that the daily dose was delivered correctly. Clinicians have been doing adaptive radiotherapy on TomoTherapy's ring gantry platform for more than four years, and as a result, they're able to evaluate dose delivery and adjust the plan accordingly to account for changes in patient anatomy or tumor size. We believe that this continual verification of dose delivery and the ability to make subsequent adjustments can result in a more effective treatment for patients."
In their presentation, Jacobs and Foley emphasized that, as with a diagnostic CT scanner, TomoTherapy technology uses a rotating, narrow "fan beam" of X-rays, where the source moves in a continuous 360-degree pattern around the patient. With this high-efficiency X-ray detector, a daily 3D image of the patient is produced with a very low dose, approximately 0.5 percent to 1 percent of the typical daily treatment dose.
The presentation also reviewed future planned enhancements to adaptive planning software, currently works-in-progress, including an improved workflow, treatment trending and deformable contouring and dose reconstruction.(1)
About TomoTherapy Incorporated
TomoTherapy Incorporated develops, markets and sells advanced radiation therapy solutions that can be used to treat a wide variety of cancers, from the most common to the most complex. The ring gantry-based TomoTherapy® platform combines integrated CT imaging with conformal radiation therapy to deliver sophisticated radiation treatments with speed and precision while reducing radiation exposure to surrounding healthy tissue. TomoTherapy's suite of solutions include its flagship Hi·Art® treatment system, which has been used to deliver more than three million CT-guided, helical intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) treatment fractions; the TomoHD™ treatment system, designed to enable cancer centers to treat a broader patient population with a single device; and the TomoMobile™ relocatable radiation therapy solution, designed to improve access and availability of state-of-the-art cancer care. TomoTherapy's stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol TOMO. To learn more about TomoTherapy, please visit TomoTherapy.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release regarding future products or product capabilities, events, expectations and other similar matters, including but not limited to statements using the terms "may," "should," or "future" constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements contained in this press release are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated, including but not limited to factors such as our ability to integrate acquired assets, ability to protect intellectual property, risks of interruption due to events beyond the company's control, and the other risks listed from time to time in TomoTherapy's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which by this reference are incorporated herein. These forward-looking statements represent TomoTherapy's judgments as of the date of this press release. TomoTherapy assumes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements in this release because of new information, future events or otherwise.
(1) These features are works-in-progress, and are not yet available for sale.
©2010 TomoTherapy Incorporated. All rights reserved. TomoTherapy, Tomo, TomoDirect, TQA, the TomoTherapy logo and Hi·Art are among trademarks, service marks or registered trademarks of TomoTherapy Incorporated in the United States and other countries.
