Varian Medical Systems to showcase future technologies for managing cancer at the ASTRO

Varian Medical Systems, Inc.Oct 29 2009

New technology enhancements from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR), designed to make radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments faster, more accurate, and easier to plan and deliver, will be on display at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in Chicago next week. The Varian booth at ASTRO will provide a glimpse into the company's R&D pipeline of future technologies for managing cancer care from diagnosis to survivorship.

"Varian's exhibit this year reflects our ongoing commitment to R&D, and the continual improvement of all of our technologies," says Dow Wilson, president of Varian's Oncology Systems business. "We're showcasing enhancements designed to make it simpler, faster, and easier for treatment centers to offer the highly-accurate image-guided forms of treatment that are opening the door to new possibilities for the treatment of lung tumors, for example, and other types of cancer that have been difficult to treat with radiation in the past."

Varian's Exhibit at ASTRO

Displays in Varian's booth at the McCormick Convention Center will cover the full range of the company's hardware and software products for radiotherapy treatment planning, image guidance, treatment delivery, and information and patient record management. Some of the highlights will include:

• RapidArc® radiotherapy technology. Now in use at over 270 cancer treatment centers worldwide, RapidArc is being used to deliver IMRT, and also stereotactic body radiosurgery in the treatment of lung, liver, kidney, spine, and brain cancer, more quickly than was possible with earlier technologies.
• Megavoltage (MV) image guidance, a new capability that makes it possible to use a pair of megavoltage images to position patients for image-guided treatments.
• Varian application virtualization, which links geographically-dispersed workstations to Varian's software products, in order to facilitate collaboration across departments and streamline treatment planning and patient chart management.
• Acuros(TM) advanced dose calculation for brachytherapy, which speeds up brachytherapy treatment planning and enhances the accuracy of dose calculations. In addition to the currently-available Acuros brachytherapy tool, a works-in-progress version

A Commitment to Open Systems

Also on display at ASTRO will be an interface that connects Varian's ARIA® oncology information system with TomoTherapy Incorporated's Hi-Art® and TomoHD(TM) treatment systems to allow for the use of Varian software in a mixed vendor environment. It provides for coordinated treatment delivery and enables automatic capture of billable activities. Similar interfaces to treatment delivery systems from other vendors are currently under development and will be shown at this meeting in the form of works-in-progress that are not yet available for sale.

Other Future Developments

Varian will showcase work on other future developments, including the following works-in-progress (i.e. not available for sale at this time):

• Motion management technologies. Varian will show several methods for using real-time tumor position information, gleaned from implanted beacon transponders from Calypso or from surface imaging technologies from Vision RT, designed to either correct a patient's position during treatment, or to move the treatment beam using the multileaf collimator so that it tracks a moving tumor.
• 4D cone-beam CT: Varian will showcase dynamic image verification technology, designed to make it possible to detect whether normal tumor motion is following the same trajectory from day to day, so that corrections can be made if changes have occurred.
• Treatment adaptation technologies. Varian will show how a spectrum of treatment planning tools are being engineered to work together to enable image-guided adaptation of a patient's treatment plan over a multi-week course of treatment. While many of the necessary tools exist now as separate products, in this exhibit Varian is highlighting the company's vision of a single uniform system that streamlines the workflow in support of clinical goals.