New Enhancements Developed for CyberKnife

New, add-on enhancements improve and speed up treatment by the CyberKnife, a radiosurgery system. These were introduced at the annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) in New Orleans (LA, USA).

Synchrony is a new system for delivering radiosurgery to tumors that move with respiration. Eliminating the need for a time-consuming breath hold, the system tracks tumors in or near the lungs as they move, allowing highly focused beams of radiation to destroy the tumors with minimal damage to adjacent healthy tissue. Synchrony records the breathing movements of a patient's chest and combines that information with sequential x-ray pictures of tiny markers inserted inside the tumor to allow precise delivery of radiation at any point in the respiration cycle.

The second enhancement, Express, is a combination of new software and hardware that speeds up treatments using the CyberKnife. The software moves the CyberKnife's robot faster between treatment beam positions and new technology allows for faster delivery of radiation. As a result, treatments are 20-25% faster than conventional CyberKnife treatments.

The third enhancement, Open Architecture, is a new version of the CyberKnife treatment planning system. The software uses a combination of medical images to analyze exactly how extensive a targeted tumor is, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic The resonance (MR), and/or positron emission tomography (PET)). The Open Architecture software allows users to incorporate these image fusion software systems into the CyberKnife.

The CyberKnife was developed by Accuray Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) in cooperation with Stanford University (CA, USA) to provide radiosurgery for lesions anywhere in the body when radiation treatment is indicated.

"Synchrony is the only technology at ASTRO that takes full advantage of robotics. We are particularly excited about this product because it will be a key feature as we move into the body radiosurgery market,” said Kristine Gagliardi, director of worldwide product marketing at Accuray.




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