Ultra-fast radiotherapy device

INTRODUCTION:

This device offers an effective and patient-sensible use of radiation sources to deliver dose directly to a target region within the patient’s body without hitting surrounding tissues. The device offers the radiation time within a few seconds with possible reduction of secondary effects to patients. The device is also cheaper.

TECHNOLOGY (INVENTION) DESCRIPTION:

We propose a new device to perform radiotherapy. The device has two major innovations: on-line measurement of the dose deposited into the patient’s body and reduced duration of the treatment session from few minutes to few seconds. The availability of on-line dose deposited measurement will avoid misalignment and will also allow geometric correction during the treatment session. This will lead to an improved overall dose delivery to the patient, eventually improving the survival probability. The reduction of the treatment session duration will increase the quality of the treatment, since the patient will be more stationary. Furthermore, it will be possible to increase by at least a factor of 2 the number of patients that can be treated within a single day.

ADVANTAGES OVER EXISTING SOLUTIONS:

This solution has both medical and economic advantages over existing conventional medical LINAC. Furthermore, its radiation can go deeper into patient’s body, even to more than 20 cm. First, it provides more penetrating radiation, leading to a better dose delivering to the tumour. Second, it has an on-line control of the dose deposited, reducing the error in the therapy. Third, this device can perform a treatment session in a few seconds, while other technologies can do it in at least 5-10 minutes. Finally, our device is approximately 2 times cheaper than the one actually existing in the market (estimated price of the device is 2 MEUR).

DEVELOPMENT STATUS (STAGE):

Our technology has been tested and validated at the laboratory level (TRL 4).

PUBLICATIONS:

J. Faure et al., Nature 431, 541-544 (2004) T Fuchs et al., Phys. Med. Biol., 54(11) 3315-28 (2009) Patent US8039819 Patent US9018603

IP PROTECTION STATUS:

We are filing a patent

TECHNOLOGY / IP OWNERS :

ELI-Beamlines, Institute of Physics, Academy of sciences of Czech Republic