Department of Radiation Therapy

The centre is well equipped with Linear Accelerator, Clinac-IX from Varian Medical System, which is a best platform for giving External Beam Radiotherapy in the world. Its Millennium multileaf collimator system facilitate dynamic Intensity.

Modulated Radiotherapy which makes it unique in whole of south Gujarat. Linear Accelerator delivers the radiation after planning on Eclipse treatment planning system. The whole network is very well managed and runs efficiently by ARIA networking system.

The treatment planning for radiotherapy for every patient is being done by CT simulator alone.

IMRT is best form of practice of radiation delivery so that actual dose and actual site must get the full dose. It is Optimization of Radiation done by Treatment planning system on the contour given by Radiation Oncologist.

Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)

Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is an advanced mode of high-precision radiotherapy that utilizes computer-controlled linear accelerators to deliver precise radiation doses to a malignant tumor. IMRT allows for the radiation dose to conform more precisely to the three-dimensional (3-D) shape of the tumor by modulating or controlling the intensity of the radiation beam. This is done by dividing this beam into thousands of small pencil sized beamlets. IMRT also allows higher radiation doses while minimizing the dose to surrounding normal critical structures. Treatment is carefully planned by using 3-D computed tomography (CT) images of the patient in conjunction with computerized dose calculations to determine the dose intensity pattern that will best conform to the tumor shape. Typically, combinations of several intensity-modulated fields coming from different beam directions produce the desired treatment plan.

Because the ratio of normal tissue dose to tumor dose is reduced to a minimum with the IMRT approach, higher and more effective radiation doses can safely be delivered to tumors with fewer side effects compared with conventional radiotherapy techniques. IMRT also has the potential to reduce treatment toxicity, even when doses are not increased. IMRT does require longer daily treatment times, however with Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) (a newer way of delivering IMRT) treatment times have been reduced substantially.

Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT)

Volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) delivers radiation on a linear accelerator using a cone beam that continuously rotates around the patient. Each rotation is called an arc and one or more arcs might be used. During each rotation, the cone beam is continuously shaped (or modulated) by the multi-leaf collimator. In addition, the dose rate (how much radiation delivered for each second) and gantry speed (how fast the beam rotates) are also optimized to generate highly conformal dose distributions. The radiation is delivered to the intended area only, allowing the radiation oncologist to spare more surrounding healthy tissue. Both VAMT and IMRT are equally effective for normal tissue sparing. However, the treatment time for VMAT is significantly shorter, thus benefits patients who require longer (30 minutes or more) treatment time.