The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is the first U.S. medical center to offer a speedier cancer radiation therapy. The new technique can turn a 20-minute radiotherapy session into a 90-second session for certain patients.

The new therapy also saves healthy human tissue from unwanted radiation exposure at rates that are the same or better than other radiotherapy techniques, according to doctors at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.

RapidArc, is the next-generation of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Conventional IMRT was introduced in the 1990s as a way to deliver multiple beams of radiation to a tumor, and minimize damage to nearby healthy tissues. RapidArc is an advancement on the earlier technology with radiation delivery times up to eight times faster than conventional IMRT according to the system's manufacturer Varian Medical Systems, Inc. The new system incorporates powerful computers to help doctors arrive at a radiotherapy treatment strategy after pouring over thousands of biological and mathematical variables, including medical scans of each patient's tumor. For more information go to www.varian.com/us/oncology/treatments/treatment_techniques/rapidarc/.

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