Researchers identifiy more accurate treatment delivery for robotic radiosurgery system
Radiosurgery is a non-invasive medical procedure in which focused beams of high-energy X-rays target tumors and other abnormalities in the body. A single large dose of radiation is capable of ablating a lesion that might not be amenable to surgical removal. However, some radiosurgery systems, such as the CyberKnife (CK), can be relatively time-consuming because the treatment planning requires the delivery of up to several hundred cone-shaped beams to adequately cover an irregularly shaped tumor. But a new study from Fox Chase Cancer Center now reports that there is an alternative to the conventional CyberKnife treatment delivery system. This new technique uses a multileaf collimator (MLC) and can flexibly sculpt a single radiation beam to match the exact contour of a tumorsignificantly reducing the treatment time and minimizing the amount of radiation to the neighboring tissues.
