by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | December 14, 2022
From the November 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
MR-guided radiotherapy cuts side effects in half compared to CT for prostate
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles showed in February that using MR instead of CT to guide radiotherapy may result in fewer side effects for prostate cancer patients.
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The findings are part of an interim analysis conducted during an ongoing Phase III randomized trial known as MIRAGE. Men undergoing SBRT for localized prostate cancer were randomly assigned to either CT-guidance or MR-guidance. Investigators assessed serious side effects or toxicities in both groups for 90 days following treatment and found those who underwent MR-guidance half as likely to experience treatment side effects.
When used with techniques such as high-dose stereotactic body radiotherapy, MR offers several theoretical advantages, including significantly reducing the need for planning margins in radiation. This is because the prostate and critical structures are more visible on MR than CT and because MR can perform real-time tracking to monitor the motion of the prostate
“This MRgRT platform obtains an MR four times a second and will 'turn off' the beam when the prostate moves outside of a preset boundary or margin. Because of these two features, we were able to significantly reduce the volume of tissue being targeted with radiation using MR-guidance. We hypothesized that this would in turn lead to less side effects,” Dr. Amar Kishan, vice chair of clinical and translational research in the departments of radiation oncology and urology at UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, told HCB News.
