A $250,000 challenge was issued by TomoTherapy® asking if any cancer center in the U.S. could top a helical TomoTherapy treatment plan using a single-rotation Varian RapidArc™ plan that could be delivered within two minutes. The challenge, open for three months, closed unanswered on June 30.

Del Coufal, TomoTherapy's vice president of marketing explains that the challenge generated strong customer support, letting them know "that our focus is, first and foremost, on improving the quality of cancer care."

The TomoTherapy Hi-Art treatment system, introduced in 2003, was built on a CT scanner platform. It has emerged as the gold standard, integrating CT imaging with continuous 360-degree delivery of targeted radiation.

Fred Robertson, CEO, talks about the new opportunity to enhance the quality of life for cancer patients. "It's about efficiencies to be gained across the clinical workflow with a single integrated system. More than 95 percent of patients who undergo treatment on our machines are CT scanned before each daily treatment."

Coufal discusses innovations on the horizon: "We expect to see improvement in overall patient throughput with an exciting new product moving through our development pipeline. It will be especially useful for the more routine case types. With this and future advances, it is clear that our next-generation, ring gantry platform can offer all the flexibility cancer centers demand."