PALO ALTO, Calif., March 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) announced today that customers using Varian TrueBeam® and Edge™ radiosurgery solutions along with Eclipse™ treatment planning software created the top scoring treatment plans in two competitive international plan studies. The studies were the 2017 TransTasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG)/ProKnow Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) Spine Plan Study and the 2017 Sun Nuclear QA and Dosimetry Symposium (QADS)/ProKnow Head and Neck Plan Study.

The goals of both studies were to create treatment plans of excellent quality that were also highly deliverable with superior quality assurance results. In the TROG/ProKnow SBRT Spine Plan Study, 19 out of the 20 top scoring plans all used Eclipse. Additionally, the nine highest scoring plans, were created by customers using Varian's TrueBeam or Edge radiosurgery systems along with Eclipse treatment planning software.

"I am proud to show the world we can create the best treatment plans right here at Kantonsspital in St.Gallen Switzerland and having leading edge Varian technology certainly makes it all possible," stated Simon Heinze, physicist at Kantonsspital who developed the top spine SBRT plan in the TROG study.
The two highest scoring treatment plans in the QADS/ProKnow Head and Neck Plan Study were also created using Varian technology. Physicist Jonathan Stenbeck devised the highest scoring head and neck treatment plan with Eclipse out of 238 participants worldwide with excellent measured quality assurance results of the plan's deliverability on TrueBeam.

"It was exciting to hear that I created the highest scoring head and neck plan using both Eclipse and a TrueBeam linear accelerator and I was able to show a very close match between the planned and delivered dose, using a Sun Nuclear ArcCheck QA device," said Jonathan Stenbeck, CMD, DABR, Greenville Health System/US Oncology. "It was also fun sharing my planning techniques with the community via ProKnowSystems.com."

In both studies, participants generated treatment plans and submitted them via a cloud-based system called ProKnow. The competition included benchmarking for achievable levels of treatment plan dose quality; analyzing delivery efficiency, variation, monitor unit usage; and sharing of best practices. Plans were scored objectively based on many different target and organ-at-risk metrics and their respective scoring functions. For more info on the studies, visit www.proknowsystems.com.

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