Sparing Brain Areas From Radiation

New software, recently used for the first time in Germany, permits a novel approach to treating brain tumors that allows clinicians to visualize regions within a patient's brain so they can be spared from radiation by automatically showing sensitive objects as three-dimensional (3D) structures during the treatment-planning process.

The iPlan RT (radiotherapy) treatment system, developed by BrainLab, Inc. (Munich, Germany), automatically combines patient scan data from different imaging modalities (i.e., computed tomography [CT], magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], positron emission tomography [PET]), allowing neurosurgeons and clinical oncologists to now accurately locate a patient's tumor shape with greater confidence than with one image set alone.

Using the system's image software, clinicians can visualize the precise position of the patient's eyes, chiasm, optic nerve, and brainstem as well as many other structures from a "brain atlas” and thus spare these areas from radiation being directed at the patient's brain tumor.

"The new software speeds up the planning process significantly but more importantly ensures greater consistency in treatment planning as more critical structures are defined more accurately than was possible with conventional methods. This approach allows us to define a complete treatment plan in 20 minutes,” stated Reinhard E. Wurm, M.D., consultant clinical oncologist at the Universitatsklinikum Charite Berlin (Germany), where the first treatment took place.

After planning with this system is completed, treatment is then undertaken with the BrainLab Novalis shaped beam system that only allows radiation to be tailored to the patient's tumor and not to those sensitive structures visualized in treatment planning. Novalis is utilized to accurately treat tumors not only in the brain but also in the lung, spine, liver, and prostate.




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