TomoTherapy

TomoTherapy was founded on the premise that the best way to harness the power and precision of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is with integrated imaging technology that can guarantee accuracy at every treatment fraction.

Today, cancer centers and solution providers alike recognize the need for image guidance. 18 years ago, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (led by “Rock” Mackie and Paul Reckwerdt) set out to address that need.

By mounting the linear accelerator (linac) of the Hi·Art treatment system on a ring gantry, the UW group moved beyond legacy design limitations with their first step. In so doing, they opened the door for 360° fan-beam delivery of IMRT and fully-integrated, megavoltage CT imaging. This advance gave clinicians the ability to better focus radiation beams, and the flexibility to adapt daily treatment based on shifting targets and changing patient anatomy. It also created entirely new options for treating the most complex cases.

Since then, a lot has transpired, including the 1997 establishment of TomoTherapy Incorporated. Now after 200+ Hi·Art installations in more than 16 countries around the world, we remain on the same path that began with a step in the right direction.

A publicly-traded company (NASDAQ:TOMO), TomoTherapy Inc. is based in the U.S. with European offices in Belgium and distribution throughout the world. The company owns multiple issued U.S. patents and has a number of patent applications pending, both in the U.S. and worldwide. The company also holds an exclusive license on more than 100 issued patents and pending applications globally.

Why TomoTherapy

Revolutionary Design

Conventional radiation treatment devices are at the end of an evolutionary path that began more than a century ago. The TomoTherapy® Hi·Art® treatment system, in contrast, was designed in the 1990s. Our goal was to develop a machine that could turn advanced, optimized radiation treatment concepts into reality.

The Hi·Art treatment system:

  • Looks like a CT scanner because it is a CT scanner, allowing efficient 3D CT imaging to be used for ensuring the accuracy of treatment for every patient, every day™
  • Leverages the ring gantry geometry used in CT scanning for the delivery of state-of-the-art, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) from all angles around the patient
  • Was designed so that highly-precise treatment plans could result in more effective treatment deliveries, with minimized side effects for patients.
Complete Integration

As an all-in-one solution, the Hi·Art system facilitates the first fully-integrated treatment process for radiation therapy. This greatly reduces the number of technical decisions that need to be made, giving clinicians more time to focus on their patients.

The Hi·Art treatment system:
  • Incorporates easy-to-use software for treatment planning, quality assurance, patient set-up and treatment delivery, all using the same secure centralized database
  • Includes a powerful, 32-processor computer system that rapidly creates sophisticated IMRT plans
  • Stores all patient and plan information in a single location; removing the risk of data transfer errors
Unparalleled Precision

Conventional radiation therapy machines use 5-9 beam angles, and were developed for 2D and 3D conformal therapy. The Hi·Art treatment system delivers radiation continuously from all angles around the patient, and features patented beam-shaping technology created specifically for IMRT. More beam angles, plus more precise beam modulation, creates dose distributions that conform to complex tumor shapes like never before.

The Hi·Art treatment system:
  • Delivers helical (continuous 360º) IMRT that uses tens of thousands of narrow beamlets, all targeting the tumor and individually-optimized to contribute to the total tumor dose
  • Offers by far the most beamlets of any form of IMRT, which translates to the most precise conformal radiotherapy available.
True Accuracy

The Hi·Art treatment system’s integrated CTrue™ technology lets clinicians efficiently acquire CT images for every patient, every day. These can be used for positioning purposes, and allow for the quantitative, dosimetric analysis and modification of a patient’s treatment at any point during the treatment course.

The Hi·Art treatment system:
  • Ensures accurate delivery of precise helical IMRT plans via 3D image-guided set-up, based on daily pre-treatment CT scans
  • Increases clinical confidence because it integrates imaging into the treatment geometry; images are fundamentally in the same frame-of-reference as the treatment beams.
Full Assurance

Since day one, a central goal of ours has been to show the dosimetric effects of misalignments and anatomy changes, and to let clinicians do something about it.

The Hi·Art treatment system:
  • Allows the same 3D images used in daily patient positioning to be used for dose guidance; this gives clinicians the ability to visualize the dose that will actually be delivered to the patient that day
  • Makes true adaptive radiation therapy (ART) practical, with highly-integrated Planned Adaptive™ software for evaluating dose and applying any needed changes to the plan

TomoTherapy Incorporated
1240 Deming Way 
Madison, WI 53717-1954 USA 
Tel: +1 608 824 2800 
Fax: +1 608 824 2996 
Web: www.tomotherapy.com