August 29, 2008 - CMS Inc., an Elekta Co., reported today that three sites have delivered clinical treatments utilizing its Monaco next-generation intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) treatment planning system.
Allegheny General Hospital (Pittsburgh, PA), Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, Netherlands) and Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital (Milwaukee, WI) have all begun producing treatment plans with the application.
Monaco reportedly represents a fundamentally new approach to IMRT planning featuring biological modeling, constrained optimization and Monte Carlo dose calculation algorithms, and includes a unique and sophisticated set of tools to make the radiotherapy planning process easier, more straightforward and clinically reliable.
"The biologically-based Monaco IMRT treatment planning system produces clinically relevant plans, which are dosimetrically superior to plans from dose-based IMRT treatment planning systems, feature shorter plan delivery times, and can be easily verified with normal QA procedures," said Moyed Miften, Ph.D., DABR, and Allegheny General Hospital's chief of medical physics. "The multi-criteria optimization and the sensitivity analysis tools in the Monaco system also help reduce the time needed to optimize IMRT plans."
Monaco’s features, designed to improve IMRT planning, include:
- Sensitivity Analysis tool that minimizes trial-and-error by guiding the decision-making process
- Smart Sequencing, a constrained aperture optimization that produces efficient step-and-shoot segments
- Biological models, voxel definition controls and multi-criterial goals that provide more intuitive and direct control over the optimization process
For more information: www.cmsrtp.com, www.elekta.com