Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust Offers Highly Precise Cancer Treatments With ExacTrac System For Image Guided Radiotherapy

Main Category: Radiology / Nuclear Medicine
Also Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics;  Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 01 Oct 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust announced today that patients with cancers from a number of different subsites such as prostate, bladder, lung, gastrointestinal tract and gynaecological areas will be treated with image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) using the new ExacTrac® system from BrainLAB. This image-guidance and positioning technology allows for more accurate treatments of benign or malignant tumours. Prostate cancer patients are now being treated using this system and clinical protocols/studies are being developed for other cancer subsites.

The ExacTrac system uses high-resolution x-rays to pinpoint a patient's position, detect small shifts or patient movement and ensures a millimetre precise set-up immediately prior to radiotherapy treatment. Potential damage to surrounding healthy tissue can be reduced. To increase accuracy during the radiotherapy sessions, the system is also designed to automatically correct patient set-up errors and identify any movement throughout the treatment procedure in real-time.

The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust already has extensive expertise with IGRT treatments. "The IGRT technology allows us to administer advanced Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) protocols with high doses in fewer treatment sessions. Studies have shown that the prostate moves up to 15mm within one single session. ExacTrac allows us to pin-point the position of these moving targets and subsequently, to decide if the patient needs to be repositioned before the treatment continues to ensure high precision," says Dr. Vincent Khoo, Consultant in Clinical Oncology at The Royal Marsden.

With the implementation of ExacTrac, more patients can now benefit from treatment options such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). The high accuracy provides consultants the possibility to precisely treat a wide range of indications, including head and neck, spine, prostate, bladder, lung and liver lesions.

The BrainLAB system also brings advantages for the clinical staff. Its intuitive workflow makes ExacTrac fast and easy to use, thereby allowing patients to benefit from IGRT accuracy without adding to the overall treatment time. Radiographers can be confident that their patients are accurately positioned for every day of their treatment.

ExacTrac systems are in clinical use in hundreds of hospitals worldwide. The Royal Marsden is the first cancer centre to adopt this technology in the UK. "We are very pleased that the ExacTrac technology has been introduced to the UK here in London as clinical experience at other international centres has shown that IGRT offers significant improvements for radiotherapy treatment of cancer," comments David James, Area Sales Manager for BrainLAB in the UK.

About The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Marsden, together with the institute of Cancer Research, is Europe's largest comprehensive cancer centre. The Royal Marsden provides diagnostic, outpatient, daycare and inpatient facilities. More than 40,000 patients from across the UK and abroad are treated at the hospital every year. The hospital is one of the country's first Foundation Trusts.

About BrainLAB

BrainLAB develops, manufactures and markets software-driven medical technology that enables procedures that are more precise, less invasive, and therefore less expensive than traditional treatments. Among the core products are image-guided systems that provide highly accurate real-time information used for navigation during surgical procedures. This utility has been further expanded to serve as a computer terminal for physicians to more effectively access and interpret diagnostic scans and other digital medical information for better informed decisions. BrainLAB solutions allow expansion from a single system to operating suites to digitally integrated hospitals covering all subspecialties from neurosurgery, orthopaedics, ENT, CMF to spine & trauma and oncology. With more than 3,000 systems installed in over 65 countries, BrainLAB is a market leader in image-guided technology. The privately held BrainLAB group, founded in 1989, is headquartered in Munich, Germany and today employs 1,000 people in 16 offices across Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America.

For more information, visit BrainLAB at http://www.brainlab.com

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