The 'Cutting Edge' symposium also included a presentation from Dr. Samuel Ryu, formerly of Henry Ford System in Detroit (now chairman of the radiation oncology department at Stony Brook University in New York), who spoke about his experiences in spine radiosurgery.

Varian also hosted an 'Emerging Technologies' symposium during ESTRO, focusing on its RapidPlan® knowledge-based treatment planning software that enables clinicians to leverage knowledge and data from earlier treatment plans to quickly develop to high-quality personalized plans for current patients. With this new software, clinicians can create standard of care plans to reduce variability in treatment planning to achieve greater consistency and quality in patient care. The RapidPlan software supports virtually every type of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatment.


Dr. Wilko Verbakel from VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam focused his presentation on the challenges of planning radiotherapy treatments for complex head and neck tumors and how utilizing knowledge-based software can lead to improved sparing of healthy tissues. He said much of this knowledge is included in the newly released RapidPlan software which was tested to provide good model-based treatment plans.

Dr. Sasa Mutic from Washington University in St. Louis, U.S., detailed his center's experiences in knowledge-based planning, describing it as a transformative development and not an incremental improvement. Dr Mutic said such tools will help enable clinicians to standardize care as well as better implement adaptive radiotherapy.

Dr. Andrew Kneebone of North Sydney Cancer Center travelled from Australia to present his institution's experiences in multileaf collimator (MLC) based tracking using Varian's Calypso transponders. The multileaf collimator is a piece of technology that uses a computer-controlled aperture to shape the radiation beam so that it matches the shape and size of the tumor. Dr. Kneebone's work has been to use the collimator to "follow" the tumor as it moves in real time, so that the treatment beam is always centered on its target, even as the tumor moves up and down as the patient breathes.

"These well attended symposia demonstrate that Varian is leading the way in cancer treatment tools and techniques," said Rolf Staehelin, head of international marketing for Varian's Oncology Systems business. "With Edge Radiosurgery, our first users are delivering highly precise intra- and extra-cranial radiosurgical treatments. Also on the new RapidPlan knowledge-based planning solution the customer response has been overwhelming, with users seeing the clinical value of utilizing and sharing their planning knowledge to create more consistent, higher quality plans in shorter times."

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