Towe explained: "Once we saw the site, we explained we could add a dividing wall through the middle of the room and put two of our treatment devices in the same space that they were originally going to have one conventional gantry. It effectively doubles patient throughput from the same footprint."

With the equipment taking up half the space, and effectively half the cost of conventional radiotherapy units, the agreement has important commercial and economic benefits for the healthcare provider.


Marie units
Marie, Leo's comprehensive solution for upright particle therapy, is named after physicist and chemist Marie Curie, who spearheaded research into radioactivity.

It features dual-energy diagnostic quality CT at the treatment isocenter to enable state of the art adaptive therapy; a stationary fixed beam delivery system that will improve reliability, beam parameters and accuracy while at the same time reducing maintenance costs; and a sophisticated patient positioning system, allowing for imaging, and treating of all particle therapy-specific anatomical sites in the upright position.

In addition, less shielding is required and there are advantages in terms of installation, maintenance and running costs.

The installation will help increase patient flow through McLaren's existing proton therapy center as part of its routine care delivery and treatment of patients with lung, breast and prostate cancers.

Smaller footprint
The technology brings a new dimension to cancer treatment by keeping the radiation beam fixed and slowly rotating the patient while seated in an upright position.

This means the units – which are a quarter the size of conventional proton therapy machines - have a significantly smaller footprint to make optimum use of healthcare space.

The shift away from rotating a large radiation generation source around a patient, to keeping the radiation source fixed and slowly rotating the patient, also reduces cost of equipment and construction.

"McLaren will realize a sizable capital cost reduction by implementing the LEO Cancer Care upright positioning and imaging system instead of our present three story, one hundred plus ton, rotating gantry solution" said Daniel Medrano, Co- Director of Research and Development for the McLaren Proton Therapy System.

Increased capacity
Underlining the benefits of the Marie system, which has previously been used in research applications, Towe said: "What this shows very clearly is that you can utilize space more effectively with a fixed beam and fit more of these treatment rooms into the same space, and as a result have more beam time to treat patients."

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