Elekta announced today that it has received the CE mark for its Harmony linear accelerator (linac), clearing the technology for commercial sales in Europe and other countries where the CE mark is recognized within the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region.

The Stockholm, Sweden-based company said in a news release that it designed the new linac system for:

• Productivity, to reduce patient setup time by as much as 50% and, combined with other workflow enhancements, to reduce treatment slots by up to 25%.
• Precision, with a multi-leaf collimator designed to provide 1 mm resolution beam-shaping across the full 40 cm X 40 cm field size to provide “shrink-wrapped” sub-millimeter conformality around the tumor target.
• Versatility to treat the most common indications, including breast, lung, pelvic and head-and-neck cancers through its options of multiple energies, treatment techniques and imaging modalities.

“Harmony was built from the ground up with patients and users in mind. It is a practical system both for developing markets and those where radiotherapy is already well-established,” said Renato Leite, head of Region Europe at Elekta. “This regulatory approval paves the way to increasing the number of patients, clinics and countries that will benefit from precision radiation medicine. We believe this brand new linac will be very successful in Europe and other regions making a positive contribution to advance cancer treatment.”