The CyberKnife® M6™ System with the InCise™ Multileaf Collimator
(MLC) was used for the first time on Feb. 26 on a 56-year-old western
Pennsylvania woman being treated for a benign brain tumor. UPMC
CancerCenter was one of the InCise MLC evaluation sites working in
collaboration with Accuray, the device’s manufacturer. The patient’s
treatment lasted 22 minutes, about half of the time treatment would have
taken without the use of advanced software and novel technologies, said
Dwight E. Heron, M.D., FACRO, FACR, director of Radiation Services at UPMC CancerCenter, a partner with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
This new technology will be especially useful for tumors in the
body that are hard to reach or tend to move, he said. The treatment was
administered as a multidisciplinary effort between Steven Burton, M.D.,from the department of Radiation Oncology and Johnathan Engh, M.D., from the department of Neurosurgery.
“Our patient was diagnosed with a brain meningioma and was a good
candidate for the highly-focused treatment that can be delivered by the
CyberKnife,” said Dr. Heron, who oversees the largest system in the U.S.
accredited by the American College of Radiation Oncology.
“With the addition of the MLC, we were able to precisely target the
tumor and spare healthy tissue, and it took us significantly less time
to do it. This real-world case is consistent with our InCise MLC
technical evaluation experience and exceeded our expectations in its
efficiency.”
The M6 Series delivers radiosurgery and stereotactic body radiation
therapy, enabling precise, high-quality dose distributions to be
administered to patients with extreme accuracy over a minimum number of
treatments, reducing side effects and preserving patients' quality of
life. The system is able to adjust and automatically stay on target in
real-time, accounting for patient and tumor motion. CyberKnife is the
only robotic radiosurgery system available today that delivers such
high-precision treatments throughout the body.
“We congratulate Dr. Heron, Dr. Saiful Huq and their team on
treating the first patient using the CyberKnife M6 System and InCise
MLC,” said Joshua H. Levine, president and chief executive officer of Accuray.
“With the addition of the MLC, clinicians can deliver the same precise
radiosurgery treatments they have come to expect with the CyberKnife
System for a wider range of tumor types, including larger and different
kinds of tumors than were previously treated.”