Elekta has received the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its XiO treatment planning software to plan spot scanning.
Spot scanning is a proton therapy delivery method that involves constructing a highly conformal dose to the tumor by using thousands of small individual beamlets instead of a single large beam, which enables Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy (IMPT).
XiO, Elekta‘s 3D / Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) treatment planning platform, offers proton therapy centers another option to plan proton deliveries.
Elekta said XiO provides tools to facilitate rapid positioning of spots to construct the dose to the tumor, in addition to a proven dose calculation algorithm to optimize each beam.
Elekta Treatment Planning Product Management Physics & Research vice president Virgil Willcut said the completely automated optimization of the spot deliveries allows clinicians to produce treatment plans with a high degree of conformality around the target, therefore, minimizing the dose to adjacent healthy tissue.
"Spot scanning especially is important for pediatric patients since it provides better normal tissue sparing and lower neutron doses than conventional proton planning, both of which reduce the chance of radiation induced side effects for a cohort of patients that are still developing and have long life expectancies," Willcut said.