‘ExacTrac’ Tumor Motion Monitoring : Enhanced Respiration-Triggered Radiotherapy

ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring device is the exciting new innovation by BrainLAB which is an adjunct tool to existent therapy machines to monitor patient positions during radiation therapy sessions.

CBCT (Cone Beam CT) is the commonly employed device in several cancer care facilities for patient set-up; but is incapable of tracking the patient’s positioning alterations which could take place at the time of radiotherapy. The ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring device could be mounted on the ceiling and helps in tracking a patient’s positions all through therapy delivery thus offering doctors greater self-confidence for targeted radiation therapy.

An infinitesimal budge from the preliminary patient set-up could have a damaging effect on healthy tissues adjoining the tumor. The ExacTrac technology employs infra-red tracking for continuously monitoring the patient’s positions and checking the reference positioning. It could be employed for treating wide-ranging indications inclusive of skull, prostate, lungs, head and neck, spine and liver.

ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring is able to work alongside majority of the linear accelerator types and its upgrading to the complete ExacTrac system could be done with ease. It provides high resolution stereoscopy X-ray imaging which is capable of targeting tumors and rectifying patient position with sub-mm accuracy in a swift and automatic 2-minute set-up.

Other Key Traits

• Coalesced X-ray imaging and infra red monitoring that facilitates correlating inner tumor motions with a patient’s respiratory cycle.
• Three-D identification of tumor movement allowing exact dosage delivery to a target/s in motion.
• Printed mm-precision setup.
• User described gating window permits fine-tuning for particular therapy boundaries.
• Allows dosage acceleration protocols past the ones doable with conventional positioning.
• Increased sparing of healthy tissues thus causing lesser associated side-effects and improved therapy results.
• Totally automated dosage delivery which enhances clinical effectiveness.
• Free respiration at the time of radiotherapy and hence not necessitating patients in breathing in a particular manner.
• X-ray confirmation of inner tumor movement during dosage delivery.
• A cost effectual device for clinicians to cover all their real time requirements of patient-tracking.

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