ViewRay Inc announces that the National Cancer Center Hospital (NCCH) of Japan has upgraded its original Cobalt MRIdian MRI-Guided Radiation Therapy System to the MRIdian Linac System and has treated its first patients. The MRIdian system will enable National Cancer Center Hospital to offer advanced MRI-guided radiation therapy technology to cancer patients who are seeking personalized treatment for pancreas, prostate, lung, liver, breast, and oligometastatic cancers.
NCC purchased its first MRIdian System in September 2016 following Shonin approval of the cobalt system from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) the month prior. On the July 25, 2022, NCCH treated their first patient with full on table adaptive workflow on the upgraded Linac version of MRIdian. MRIdian Linac features linear accelerator delivery and enables daily on-table adaptive radiotherapy and real-time tracking to adjust radiation beam delivery dynamically for subtle anatomical changes that may occur, both during treatment delivery and throughout the course of treatment. Combined, these capabilities help clinicians improve targeting precision and thus deliver higher radiation doses.
“Over the past 6 years we’ve seen firsthand the benefits of real-time MRI-guidance and on-table adaptive treatment delivery and its value in improving outcomes for cancer patients, so we look forward to incorporating the MRIdian Linac system to further enhance our MRI-guided radiation therapy offerings,” said Dr. Kazuaki Shimada, Director of National Cancer Center Hospital. “MRIdian’s gating technology is unparalleled and allows us to be aggressive in our delivery of stereotactic body radiation therapy because we can feel confident that the dose is accurately reaching the target without collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue, can offer the best medical care to the society,” said Dr. Hiroshi Igaki, Chief, Department of Radiation Oncology.
Japan is the world’s third largest market for radiation oncology and the National Cancer Center Hospital is one of Japan’s leading national cancer treatment facilities, providing patient care for over 60 years. National Cancer Center is at the forefront of research in cancer treatment and plays a central role in training doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to specialize in cancer medicine.
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.
[Source(s): ViewRay Inc, PR Newswire]
