Opening Doors at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando
The mission at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando is to “use every available resource to defeat cancer.” Part of Orlando Regional Healthcare, M. D. Anderson - Orlando is affiliated with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which has been ranked as one of the top two cancer hospitals in the United States for the past 14 years by U.S. News & World report. In 2003, M. D. Anderson - Orlando opened a new 10-story comprehensive multidisciplinary cancer center. And the TomoTherapy Hi·Art System® has been a part of it all.
“Helical TomoTherapy is the future of image-guided IMRT and is an important step forward in cancer treatment,” said Dr. Patrick Kupelian, Director of Clinical Research for the Radiation Oncology Dept. A radiation oncologist and project leader for the TomoTherapy project at M. D. Anderson - Orlando, Dr. Kupelian came to the Center in 2002, when he learned the department was planning to purchase the Hi·Art System.
While Dr. Kupelian believes the technology is too young to make a definitive statement about TomoTherapy’s effectiveness, he notes that initial results are promising, and treatments for prostate and lung cancers seem to be tolerated very well. “Some patients currently ineligible for radiotherapy may be candidates for treatment because of TomoTherapy’s enhanced precision,” explains Dr. Kupelian.
“TomoTherapy is proving to be an extremely valuable tool for treating lung cancer patients,” affirms Dr. Sanford Meeks, Chief of Radiophysics and Head Physicist at M. D. Anderson - Orlando. “Not only does it allow precise image-guided intensity modulated radiotherapy, it also provides valuable information regarding tumor changes during a course of radiotherapy.”
“We’re gathering a lot of data, and getting much more information than was available on prior machines,” confirms Dr. Kupelian. “This new technology is really opening up many unexplored avenues in radiation oncology.” Performing TomoImage scans before each treatment, doctors can document that the tumor is shrinking on a daily basis. The goal, according to Dr. Kupelian, is to try to discover a pattern, “to see if by week 4 or 5 we can tell how a patient will do later, or see how we can modify the treatment to decrease dose as the tumor shrinks.”
This graph shows how the size of a lung tumor shrinks over a course of 20 treatments with the TomoTherapy Hi·Art System® at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando.
The radiation oncology team at M. D. Anderson - Orlando is also using TomoImaging to gather important data on treatment of prostate cancers. Performing daily TomoImage scans, oncologists can quantitatively analyze differences in patient setup, and determine how changes in patient positioning can affect overall treatment. To do this, researchers are using dose recalculation to try to determine how much radiation each organ actually receives every day, as well as the cumulative dose for each structure.
“TomoTherapy represents the current state of the art in image-guided radiotherapy,” observes Dr. Meeks. “While many vendors have developed very good solutions for portions of the IGRT challenge, in my view TomoTherapy currently has the best comprehensive package on the market.”
CT images of a TomoTherapy treatment plan for prostate cancer.
18 Aug 2004
