Northside Hospital Cancer Institute has expanded radiation therapy services at Northside Hospital Forsyth with the addition of a new, advanced linear accelerator.
The Varian Medical Systems’ TrueBeam is an advanced linear accelerator – fully integrated for image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT), intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and RapidArc® radiotherapy and radiosurgery.
IGRT uses advanced imaging to allow doctors and clinicians to see tumors in real time, so that they can correct the patient’s position and treat the cancer precisely. The new linear accelerator, which replaces an earlier Varian model, incorporates Vision RT motion-management imaging technology to address the challenges of patient’s moving during treatment and increase the accuracy and safety of each treatment. It tracks the patient in 3D real time, calculating any movement (including breathing) the patient makes.
The new linear accelerator treats cancer anywhere in the body where radiation treatment is indicated and opens the door to new possibilities for the treatment of challenging cases such as cancers in the lung, breast, abdomen, and head and neck as well as other cancers that are treatable with radiotherapy.
With IMRT, staff can customize a patient’s radiation dose by varying (or modulating) the amount of radiation that is sent to different parts of the tumor. RapidArc technology, also available on Northside’s TrueBeam, takes IMRT a step further, generating higher doses of radiation and treating the entire tumor in a single arc around the patient, while sparing normal, healthy tissue and dramatically reducing the amount of time the patient spends on the couch.
TrueBeam also includes iterative cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging, which allows physicians to view higher-quality, sharper images of the target area and have increased confidence in their patient’s position during treatment. The combination of these features mean that Northside is able to deliver the most accurate and safest radiation therapy possible.
The new linear accelerator in Forsyth is Northside’s fifth TrueBeam – additional machines are at Northside Hospital Cancer Institute locations in Alpharetta, Canton, Midtown Atlanta and Sandy Springs. In all, more than 52,600 radiation treatment procedures were performed at Northside facilities in 2018.
