New Release of Elekta's Monaco Treatment Planning System Prepares Software for Stereotactic Radiation Therapy

ATLANTA, July 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Among the many new
features of Monaco® 3.0, Dynamic Conformal Arc (DCA) Therapy
provides clinicians with a simple way to deliver highly conformal
stereotactic plans by using the multi-leaf collimator (MLC) to
dynamically conform around a target as the treatment beam rotates
around the patient. DCA recently received 510(k) clearance for
Monaco from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“DCA can be used to render more conformal plans by creating
multiple arcs in a non-coplanar fashion – in such a way that
the geometry of each arc minimizes the dose to the adjacent organs
during the gantry rotation,” says Todd Powell, Executive Vice
President, Elekta Software. “When this technique is used in
conjunction with micro-MLCs – such as the new Apex™*
MLC, which is now supported in Monaco 3.0 – it can yield very
conformal plans and is much easier in terms of quality assurance
measurements.”

DCA is particularly well-suited for stereotactic treatments
because it eliminates the need to modulate the typically higher
doses per fraction in stereotactic therapy. DCA’s benefit,
therefore, is fewer monitor units and reduced treatment time
compared with other delivery methods.

“With DCA, clinicians have the option to obtain a comparably
conformal plan with approximately half the treatment time and
reduced scatter dose,” Powell adds.

Monaco 3.0 offers array of stereotactic tools

Streamlining the stereotactic workflow is a major goal of Monaco
3.0, which includes: