Swedish medical equipment developer Elekta has secured an order to supply its magnetic resonance radiation therapy (MR/RT) system to Australia-based radiotherapy treatment provider GenesisCare.
Image: MRI scan in a hospital. Ken Treloar/Unsplash
GenesisCare has developed a model for cancer care that is designed to enhance healthcare quality and access.
The model will ensure that patients receive the right care when required, identifying ways to capture and monitor patient outcomes and offer better support to the people looking after patients.
The Elekta Unity is claimed to be the world’s first MR-linac and has secured CE Mark approval.
It is a high-field 1.5T MR imaging and offers precision radiation therapy. It offers tailored solution for the new field of magnetic resonance radiation therapy (MR/RT).
GenesisCare executive manager of oncology Keith Hansen said the new MR-linac will enable the company to see soft tissue during treatment with better accuracy.
“In real-time we’ll be able to track the tumor, and also any movement of organs at risk, to further minimize a patient’s side effects. The added visibility of the MRI will also enable us to treat regions that have been difficult to treat before,” Hansen said.
About 140,000 new cancer cases are estimated to be diagnosed in Australia in 2018 alone, and that there will be nearly 50,000 cancer deaths in the same period.
Elekta president and CEO Richard Hausmann said: “We are proud of the contributions that Elekta products, software and services have made to advance the care of Australian cancer patients, and we are gratified that GenesisCare is helping to achieve our shared vision of making innovative technologies available to patients who may benefit from them.”
Elekta recently announced that the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht started treating cancer patients using a CE-marked, fully-integrated clinical radiation treatment workflow on the company’s Elekta Unity MR/RT system.
The first patient treated with Elekta Unity had been treated for prostate cancer 10 years ago, but demonstrated increasing levels of prostate specific antigen PSA
Elekta said the treatment of the first patient on its system confirms the use of diagnostic-quality MR images to enable adaptation of the patient’s treatment plan during each treatment session.