A team of Alberta medical physicists have announced the creation of the world's first machine that can take MRIs at the same time radiation therapy is underway, according to a story published on Canwest News Service on February 16.

If true, the equipment could help doctors better control lung, breast, brain, abdominal and prostate tumors.

Gino Fallone, a medical physicist at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, who was part of the team that built the machine says that it will provide precise magnetic resonance images of where the tumors are in the body, even if they move during treatment. Doctors could then use higher levels of radiation since they wouldn't be as worried about hitting healthy tissue around the tumor.
"Nobody cures cancer," Fallone told Canwest News, but such a machine has the potential to increase tumor control by 20 to 40 percent, which means it could significantly increase rates of survival and prolong life.

Since today's MRI machines can't be used during the actual radiation treatment because the magnets and radio frequencies in the machine interfere with the radio frequencies of the linear accelerators used to give patients radiation, scientific and clinical teams across the world have been trying for years to invent such a machine.

The new machine would allow doctors to see the exact location of the tumor during radiation and to aim the radiation right at the tumor, even if it's moving, said Fallone. Healthy tissue would no longer be harmed.

The Cross Cancer Institute currently holds a patent on the prototype, which was developed with $3 million from the Alberta Cancer Foundation, of which $640,000 was used to actually build it.

The prototype invented by the Alberta team hasn't yet been tested on patients but they hope to get enough money and hospital space to begin clinical trials on cancer patients in about one year.

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