A Medical Device Daily

Royal Philips (Andover, Massachusetts)is introducing a variety of “advances” in its portfolio of oncology solutions designed to help physicians define their targets, and it is one of many companies rolling out new products, product enhancements and other announcements at the 48^th annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO; Fairfax, Virginia) that began Sunday and continues through Thursday in Philadelphia.

Philips said that because console time is at a premium in imaging centers, it is offering its Tumor LOC application on the workstation. Tumor LOC is an application used in radiation oncology for localizing target volumes for radiation therapy planning. It includes features for viewing Respiratory Correlated CT datasets and analyzing motion of target and surrounding anatomy.

The company is also unveiling Panorama 1.0T R/T — which it calls “the first high-field open MR simulator.” Tumor Localization (Tumor LOC), Philips said, has only been available to Philips Brilliance CT Big Bore customers on the console, but with software release 3.5 this application will be available on the Extended Brilliance Workspace (EBW). The added convenience will be particularly beneficial for Brilliance Big Bore customers with large respiratory-correlated workloads, it said.

All of the 4-D tools found on the console will now be available on the extended Brilliance Workspace.

When offered together with Remote Reconstruction and Pulmonary Viewer, it turns the EBW into a high performance 4D oncology workstation. 4-D tools such as digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRR) and digitally composited radiographs (DCR) are designed to allow users to visualize respiratory motion from a “beam’s eye view” and evaluate multi-phasic volumetric datasets. This helps to determine where a tumor has moved over time and takes into account the depth of the field, the company said.

The Panorama 1.0T option, dedicated for radiation oncology and FDA-cleared — includes an external laser positioning system, an oncology tabletop with indexing, geometric distortion correction software and specialized imaging protocols.

The open gantry of Panorama 1.0T is designed to allow for patient scanning in treatment position with immobilization devices or supine inclined for breast imaging.

Philips also reported that it is collaborating with the University of Florida (Gainesville, Florida) on the development of Proton Therapy Planning software, working with a consortium of clinical proton therapy centers to guide the definition and pre-clinical testing phases of the project.

Consortium members include Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston), Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland , and Indiana University’s Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute (MPRI; Bloomington, Indiana), in addition to the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute (UFPTI).

Philips is also collaborating with Toronto Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (Toronto) and Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (Thunder Bay, Ontario) on research to develop MR simulation and treatment planning software for greater therapy targeting accuracy in soft tissues such as the brain. Also, Philips and RaySearch Medical (Stockholm, Sweden), have signed an agreement to expand the current IMRT optimization OEM relationship to focus on new areas such as biologically and image guided adaptive radiation therapy (IGART).

Finally, Philips and University Health Network reported a new OEM agreement to commercialize an electronic radiation therapy plan review and approval product. This functionality is in clinical use at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH; Toronto), supporting more than 50 Pinnacle3 workstations. The product offers paper-saving workflow efficiencies to Philips’ worldwide base of more than 2,000 Pinnacle3 customers.

In other news from ASTRO:

• Accuray (Sunnyvale, California) and Siemens Medical Solutions (Concord, California) reported entering an agreement for the development of imaging and software solutions targeted for use in both radiosurgery and radiotherapy.

The companies will focus on the integration of Siemens computed tomography (CT) imaging technology with Accuray’s CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System. They will also work towards the integration of Accuray’s advanced targeting techniques into Siemens radiotherapy product line.

“This collaboration with Siemens Medical Solutions will enable Accuray to offer additional radiosurgery solutions to healthcare providers worldwide,” said Euan Thomson, PhD, president/CEO of Accuray. “Together, Siemens and Accuray will better serve the needs of patients by providing improved care options to medical facilities.”

Accuray is a global provider of robotic radiosurgery. Its CyberKnife System is designed to treat tumors anywhere in the body.