This is a quantum leap forward in terms of accuracy with timeframes that were previously unimaginable, says Sophie Wetherall, Varian BrachyTherapy software product manager. BrachyVision Acuros offers an improvement in dose calculation that will help clinicians make better decisions about dose to their patients and further their knowledge to make treatments more accurate.
Being able to have a representation of the dose distribution in an inhomogeneous, bounded geometry in a matter of several minutes just didn’t seem plausible until now, says Dr. Papagiannis. We are confident that Acuros marks a significant improvement over current treatment planning systems.
It’s simple to introduce to a clinical setting because all settings are predefined and it’s easy to learn. It allows us to be more confident in the dose distributions and dose statistics used in the treatment planning process and could very well be used for patients where brachytherapy is the sole treatment. It also works well for boost applications because the margins to tolerance levels of critical structures can be assessed more confidently.
BrachyVision Acuros calculation times tend to average between three and eight minutes depending on the applicator used, adds Wetherall. By comparison, the same calculations could take hours or days using the standard Monte Carlo method.
