ViewRay Inc announces that the VA Houston Healthcare System has selected a MRIdian MRI-guided radiation therapy system to expand radiation therapy services at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. The MRIdian system will enable the VA Houston Cancer Program to offer advanced MRI-guided radiation therapy technology to Veterans throughout the region who are seeking personalized treatment for pancreas, prostate, lung, liver, breast, and oligometastatic cancers.
VA Houston Healthcare System provides state-of-the-art healthcare services to Veterans at 12 locations of care in southeast Texas and is one of the leading healthcare systems serving Veterans in the South-Central VA Health Care Network. They are an innovative care center within the Veterans Integrated Service Network 16 (VISN 16), which includes medical centers and clinics in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, southeast Texas, and northwest Florida.
The Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center joins the Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center (VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System) and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center (VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System) as the third Veteran’s Affairs facility to invest in MRIdian SMART (stereotactic MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy), which combines the benefits of real-time MRI visualization, on-table adaptive therapy, and automatic beam control, to allow clinicians to deliver precise radiation therapy treatment.
“ViewRay is excited to see another VA Healthcare system join the MRIdian community. This is a testament to their dedication and commitment to bringing the most advanced radiation therapy to our Veterans,” said Paul Ziegler, Chief Commercial Officer at ViewRay. “Thousands of patients treated on MRIdian prove compelling and consistent clinical outcomes in both tough to treat and more common cancers. Patients demand short-course non-invasive therapy with fewer side effects and the VA is clearly committed to delivering that to every patient they serve.”
The MRIdian system provides oncologists outstanding anatomical visualization through diagnostic-quality MR images and the ability to adapt a radiation therapy plan to the targeted cancer with the patient on the table. This combination allows physicians to define tight treatment margins to avoid unnecessary radiation exposure of vulnerable organs-at-risk and healthy tissue and allows the delivery of ablative radiation doses in five or fewer treatment sessions, without relying on implanted markers. By providing real-time continuous tracking of the target and organs-at-risk, MRIdian enables automatic gating of the radiation beam if the target moves outside the user-defined margins. This allows for delivery of the prescribed dose to the target, while sparing surrounding healthy tissue and critical structures, which results in minimizing toxicities typically associated with conventional radiation therapy
To date, nearly 25,000 patients have been treated with MRIdian. Currently, 53 MRIdian systems are installed at hospitals around the world where they are used to treat a wide variety of solid tumors and are the focus of numerous ongoing research efforts. MRIdian has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, scientific meeting abstracts, and presentations.
[Source(s): ViewRay Inc, PR Newswire]
