Three years of intense research and development and close collaboration with world class academic and radiotherapy centres have produced a novel solution for patient set up in radiation therapy
AlignRT utilises proprietary real-time 3D surface imaging combined with high speed tracking technology to determine the position of a patient in 3D.
The system includes a gated imaging capability allowing data to be acquired at a defined and reproducible point in the respiratory cycle, thus minimising setup errors resulting from breathing.
Trials have been underway for close to a year at leading hospitals in the UK.
"Clinical experience has shown that AlignRT's gated 3D imaging can be used to reduce set-up errors resulting from respiratory motion".
"This is an important development in facilitating high precision conformal radiotherapy and IMRT" explains Margaret Bidmead, head of radiotherapy physics at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London.
David Landau, consultant clinical oncologist at St Thomas' Hospital, London, believes that "AlignRT has the potential to be the new gold-standard in patient and treatment set-up".
In June 2004, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, acquired an AlignRT system.
Since then it has been using AlignRT within an IRB (ethics) approved trial on partial breast irradiation (PBI) patients.
George Chen, professor, Harvard Medical School and director of radiation physics, Department of Radiation Oncology has led the evaluation programme at MGH.
"Preliminary analysis suggests that in comparison to laser and port film setup, AlignRT is the most reproducible and accurate method for PBI patient set up" reports Professor Chen.
Results from these studies were presented by Simon Powell during his talk at the panel presentation entitled 'Technical Advances in Breast Cancer: Partial Breast Irradiation'.
