PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — RapidArc®
radiotherapy from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE:
VAR) can be used to treat patients with blood cancers by
quickly and accurately delivering “clinically favorable” total
marrow irradiation (TMI), according to a team of noted cancer
treatment experts who spoke at the 2011 joint meeting of the
American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and the
Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP) in
Vancouver last week.  
Their recent study on this topic, which is available online as
an article in press ahead of publication, is slated to appear in an
upcoming issue of the International Journal of Radiation
Oncology*Biology*Physics.(1)

“Compared to conventional IMRT and tomotherapy, RapidArc appears
to improve on the dose distribution, in terms of normal tissue
sparing, as well as on the efficiency of treatment,” said Bulent
Aydogan, PhD, associate professor of medical physics at the
University of Chicago and the director of medical physics at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.

Aydogan and his collaborators planned and delivered, in their
recent dosimetric feasibility study, RapidArc TMI treatments for
six patients, and subsequently compared the treatment plan
parameters, including median dose, mean dose, and maximum dose, to
fixed-gantry and tomotherapy plans for the same cases.  They
found that RapidArc produces dose distributions that are comparable
to conventional intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in terms of
target coverage, but with improved normal tissue sparing.
 

The RapidArc treatments could also be delivered much more
efficiently, requiring approximately 18 minutes once a patient was
positioned for treatment.  By comparison, treatment times of
45 to 50 minutes have be

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