Radiosurgery System Targets Tumors Moving in Respiration

The Synchrony respiratory tracking system, developed by Accuray (Sunnyvale CA, USA), is a new enhancement to the CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery system, also manufactured by Accuray. The Synchrony system enables real-time dynamic tracking and delivery of a highly precise dose of radiation to targets that move with respiration.

"Launching the Synchrony system represents a major advance in the technology of radiation treatments. The human body is a dynamic, moving organism, but traditional radiation treatment devices have a static approach to treatment delivery that is unable to compensate for the body's natural motion. [This system] maximizes the benefits of the CyberKnife robotic, image-guided capability to track tumors as they move, and now opens a new cancer marker to radiosurgery,” said Euan Thomson, Ph.D., president and CEO of Accuray.

This system has been involved in treatment applications at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF; CA, USA) for one year. "The Synchrony system represents true dynamic radiosurgery--the ability to irradiate targets accurately as they are moving. This is an extraordinary advance in extracranial radiosurgery because it allows physicians to use much tighter margins to treat tumors that move with breathing. More healthy tissue is spared because it is no longer necessary to use larger margins to compensate for movement of tumors. We have used [this system] over the last year at our institution with promising results,” remarked David Larson, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology at UCSF Medical Center.




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