Ceylinco Cancer Centre upgrades to RapidArc to offer faster, higher precision treatments

Linear Accelerator now equipped to provide VMAT in addition to IMRT and IGRT

The Ceylinco Cancer Centre has announced the launch of RapidArc radiation treatment for cancer, following a significant upgrade to the Varian Clinac iX Linear Accelerator (Linac) in use at the Centre.Offering enhanced accuracy and reduced treatment times, RapidArc delivers highly conformal doses of radiation through complete 360-degree rotation and speed variations of the linear accelerator gantry, enabling the Linac to provide Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) – RapidArc patented technology of Varian.

Compared with conventional radiotherapy techniques, RapidArc can achieve high-target volume coverage while minimising damage to normal tissues.

Because RapidArc treatments are fast, patients undergoing radiation are not required to hold still for long, and each treatment session lasts only a few minutes, the Centre said. Intensity Modulated Radiation Treatment (IMRT) which usually takes 15 to 20 minutes can now be completed in a fraction of that time.

“Our continuing investments to improve patient outcomes has augmented the versatility of our Linear Accelerator, which can now offer even more accurate and faster patient treatment delivery with RapidArc in addition to existing IMRT and Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) said R. Renganathan, Chairman of Ceylinco Healthcare Services Limited (CHSL), which owns the Ceylinco Cancer Centre. “From inception, our intention has been to keep pace with treatments offered overseas and to offer services at a significantly lower cost. This latest upgrade is an example of that commitment.”

He said RapidArc has become a currently used technology in many centers around the world, and the upgrade of the Ceylinco Cancer Centre’s Linac widens the treatment options available to medical professionals, enabling them to choose the most effective option on a case-by-case basis.

RapidArc radiotherapy technology, produced by Varian Medical Systems, is an extremely fast and precise form of image-guided, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Image guidance improves tumour targeting, while IMRT shapes the radiation dose so that it conforms closely to the 3D shape of the tumour.

Volumetric modulated arc therapy is a newer radiation therapy technique. It delivers the radiation dose as the treatment machine rotates. This technique shapes the radiation dose to the tumour and reduces the dose to the organs surrounding the tumour. VMAT also has the potential to offer additional advantages, such as reduced treatment delivery time compared with conventional static field intensity modulated radiotherapy.

The Ceylinco Cancer Centre also recently upgraded the treatment planning software as well as associated hardware components of the Varian Clinac iX Linear Accelerator to provide new tools for medical physicists to achieve better and improved treatment planning in addition to an enhanced level of security in terms of patient data safety and cyber-attacks.

With this upgrade, Ceylinco Cancer Center became the only centre in Sri Lanka to use version 17.0.1 of the ‘Eclipse’ treatment planning software and the ‘Aria’ patient database management software with the Varian Clinac iX Linear Accelerator.