Compact Proton Therapy System Provides Advanced Beam Modes

A new intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) system allows clinicians to operate with sub-millimetric precision treatment.

The IBA Proteus ONE is a single-room configuration consisting of an accelerator, a direct beam line, and a compact gantry. The smaller footprint of the Proteus ONE allows for correspondingly smaller facilities, reducing construction and maintenance costs, which helps make the technology available to more cancer care providers. It also reduces the amount of time staff members need to position patients for optimal treatment, which helps reduce treatment times and patient stress.

The Proteus ONE is equipped with pencil beam scanning (PBS) which allows delivery of very high levels of conformity and dose uniformity, even in complex-shaped tumors, whilst at the same time sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. Advanced imaging techniques include cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) and stereoscopic imaging, which allow the treatment of a diverse range of ocular tumors, central nervous system (CNS) tumors, head and neck malignancies, thoracic malignancies, and abdominal and pelvic malignancies.

The compact gantry offers a rolling floor design for 360° of treatment access. This is achieved due to the 220° rotating structure and a robotic patient positioner with the six degrees of freedom of movement. And since the system is allocated with a dedicated accelerator, the need for a control space and the accompanying operational requisites are eliminated. The Proteus ONE IMPT system is a product of Ion Beam Applications (IBA; Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium), and has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The Proteus ONE aligns with the US healthcare trend of providing the highest quality of cancer treatment possible at the best possible price,” said Olivier Legrain, CEO of IBA commented: “We are confident that Proteus ONE will drive greater momentum in the adoption of this next generation targeted cancer treatment internationally. The approval reaffirms our world leading position in the delivery of highly targeted, safer cancer treatment solutions.”

Proton therapy is a precise form of radiotherapy (RT) that uses charged particles instead of x-rays. It can be a more effective form of treatment than conventional RT as it directs the therapeutical radiation beam more precisely, with minimal damage to surrounding tissue. Evidence is growing that protons can be effective in treating a number of cancers, in particular children and young people with brain tumors, for whom it appears to produce fewer side effects such as secondary cancers, growth deformity, hearing loss, and learning difficulties.

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