TomoTherapy and Why!

Why TomoTherapy®?

The TomoTherapy^® platform gives clinicians everything they need to deliver the best radiation therapy possible.

The short story.

TomoTherapy users have the unique ability to:

• 

  Use daily CT imaging to guide treatment based on patient anatomy for that day, rather than for last week or last month

• Customize delivery for each patient, surrounding the target with highly-precise radiation delivered from all angles
• Minimize radiation exposure to healthy tissue
• If necessary, adapt the treatment plan at any point

About five years ago, the first patient was treated on a TomoTherapy treatment system. Today, thousands will be treated on more than 200 systems installed in centers around the world. This growing community of patients—survivors—is our greatest source of pride and inspiration.

The rest of the story.

For more than 80 years, radiation therapy has been used in cancer care. The primary challenges have remained the same:

• How can doctors be sure the beam is reaching the tumor as planned?
• How can harm to healthy tissue around the tumor be minimized?

Addressing these challenges in newer, better ways has always entailed adapting a design from a different era. In the early 1990s, we had the opportunity to change that with a machine built for the future.

360º delivery. Conventional machine design allows radiation to be delivered from only a few directions. The TomoTherapy treatment system’s linear accelerator (linac) is mounted to a CT scanner-like ring gantry, which means TomoTherapy treatments can be delivered continuously, from all angles around the patient. More beam directions give physicians more control in how they plan treatments—and more assurance that dose will be confined to the tumor, reducing the risk of short- and long-term side effects.

Thousands of targeted beamlets. The TomoTherapy treatment system uses a patented multi-leaf collimator (MLC) that divides the radiation beam into beamlets, all aimed at the tumor. Typically, tens of thousands of beamlets are used in a single TomoTherapy treatment session. Powerful software optimizes the contribution of each one to the total tumor dose, minimizing exposure to healthy tissue.

CTrue^™ image guidance for every patient, every day^™. Our unique ring gantry design facilitates a 360º delivery pattern. Perhaps even more importantly, it integrates true CT imaging that can be used on a daily basis to guide the accurate delivery of each treatment session. No other radiation therapy machine offers this seamless integration of image-guided and intensity-modulated radiation therapy. No other machine can.

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