April 5, 2018 — Mevion Medical Systems announced the treatment of the first patient in the world on the Mevion S250i Proton Therapy System at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Proton therapy is a precise form of radiation therapy that has the potential to reduce the amount of radiation exposure in some cancers. The Mevion system at MedStar Georgetown includes Hyperscan pencil beam scanning (PBS), which improves on existing proton scanning capabilities and enables clinicians to deliver conformal fields faster and with more precision than in the past.
The Hyperscan system utilizes a novel technology, the Adaptive Aperture, a proton multi-leaf collimator (pMLC), to achieve sharp lateral dose gradients. Multi-leaf collimators are common to conventional radiation therapy and were a key enabling technology to make intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) possible. Mevion’s Adaptive Aperture pMLC is unique to proton therapy, according to the company, designed to protect sensitive organs at every energy layer of the treatment.
In addition to MedStar Georgetown, the Mevion S250i system is under active installation at centers throughout the U.S. and Europe. Two more Hyperscan centers will be treating patients by the end of 2018. An additional two centers are in the construction planning phase, both of which are instances of existing sites adding a second treatment room.
At Medstar Georgetown, the proton system is integrated directly to the hospital as part of a renovation to the existing cancer center entrance. While other proton centers often have to be built as separate standalone facilities, the compact size of the Mevion system enables it to be integrated to existing radiation oncology departments. This can bring significant economic savings to these projects by enabling the centers to share existing support services and personnel throughout the hospital rather than duplicating them in a standalone facility.
Mevion will host a luncheon symposium on Hyperscan PBS and compact proton therapy systems at the annual European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) meeting April 21 in Barcelona, Spain. A panel of speakers will be discussing the implementation of these projects and the clinical experiences of the Hyperscan system.
For more information: www.mevion.com
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