ViewRay, Inc. announced that the Czech Ministry of Health has approved the purchase of ViewRay’s MRIdian system to bring MRI-guided radiation therapy to treat its cancer patients at the Military University Hospital Prague in the Czech Republic. Reportedly, this is the first and only hospital to offer the precision of MRIdian Stereotactic MRI-guided Adaptive Radiotherapy (SMART) in the Czech Republic. The purchase was co-financed by the REACT-EU financial instrument and the founder’s contribution, the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic.  

The Military University Hospital Prague is a training, educational, and professional medical facility of the Army of the Czech Republic. It provides comprehensive health care at the level of teaching hospitals to members of the Czech Army, war veterans, and people in and outside the region. The hospital has 10 clinics and 20 specialized departments, many collaborating to train medical students.

“The acquisition of MRIdian marks another significant shift in the treatment of cancer patients throughout the Czech Republic and provides a highly sophisticated and gentle cancer treatment option at a world-class level,” said Professor Miroslav Zavoral, MD, PhD, Director of the Military University Hospital Prague. “The system offers precision with unparalleled MRI-quality visualization, real-time tissue tracking, and automatic beam control while allowing for adaptation during the planning and treatment process. The system will significantly improve the accuracy of radiation delivery in problematic areas of the abdominal cavity and mediastinum, thus enabling better-quality treatment. In addition, we can expect a higher probability of local tumor control and a longer survival time for cancer patients treated here.”

According to ViewRay, the MRIdian system provides oncologists with 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, allowing physicians to define tight treatment margins to avoid unnecessary radiation exposure of vulnerable organs-at-risk.

ViewRay explains that MRIdian enables automatic gating of the radiation beam if the target moves outside the user-defined margins by providing continuous real-time tracking of the target and organs at risk, which allows for delivering the prescribed dose to the target while sparing surrounding healthy tissue and critical structures.

To date, reportedly over 29,000 patients have been treated with MRIdian. Currently, 57 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, according to the company. MRIdian has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, scientific meeting abstracts, and presentations.

For a list of treatment centers, visit ViewRay’s website.