Elekta and Philips plan to install a high-field (1.5 Tesla) MR-guided linear accelerator system at The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI).

The MR-linac integrates a radiotherapy system and an MR scanner with software that allows a physician to capture images of a patient’s tumor and surrounding tissue while reducing radiation exposure to normal tissue cells.

The system will allow physicians to locate the tumor, as well as lock onto it during beam delivery, even when the tumor tissue is moving during treatment or changes shape, location or size between treatment sessions.

“Although MR-linac is not yet approved for use in patients, we anticipate that the system will be able to treat all types of cancers that are being treated today with radiation therapy,” Kevin Brown, global vice president of scientific research, Elekta, told HCB News.

He added that the system is built for future advancements, and will be able to support advanced motion management strategies, gating, multi-leaf collimator tracking, and enable the use of MR functional imaging at the time of treatment.

The locations of tumors and organs at risk for cancer change from day to day, or even constantly, according to The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), and a tumor in the lung can move up and down as a person breathes, resulting in inadequate means for distinguishing a tumor in a scan.

X-rays taken before radiotherapy are then used to plan dose delivery, but there is still a risk that the tumor shifted and radiation may hit adjacent healthy tissues, according to ICR.

“The ability to actually see that we are delivering the correct radiation dose to the intended target has the potential to reduce side effects and improve quality of life, allow for escalated dose delivery and ultimately increase our ability to control tumors,” said Dr. Uukle van der Heide, medical physicist and group leader, Department of Radiation Oncology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute, in a statement.

NKI is one of seven institutions participating in the Elekta MR-linac Consortium, an international network assembled to investigate the clinical value of MR-guided radiation therapy. So far the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have already installed the system, with all consortium members expected to have it by the end of this year.

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