ESTRO panel concludes that digital twins and continuous integration shorten radiotherapy development timelines
Digital twins and continuous integration (CI) will enable OEMs in the radiotherapy industry to significantly shorten their linac development timelines and minimise integration risks, an expert panel concluded at ESTRO 2026 in Stockholm, Sweden.
During the panel discussion titled ‘Keeping pace with innovation: faster radiotherapy system development through digital twins’, speakers from Cosylab and Teledyne Healthcare presented three major challenges facing radiotherapy system development. First was the widening gap between today’s engineering skills and those needed tomorrow to develop next-generation platforms. Second, the rising expectations regarding how quickly new products must be brought to market and, third, was unpredictable development timelines, which have traditionally been dictated by hardware availability.
The panel concurred that software simulators can enable engineers to have their control system software interact with real-world behaviour within each subsystem, speed up integration and repeatedly test under both normal and abnormal operating conditions – all prior to the physical machine’s assembly.
“With simulators inside CI, every software change is validated automatically. This turns simulation from a development convenience into a traceable engineering method,” explained Cosylab senior medical systems architect Rok Štefanic. Teledyne Healthcare vice president of business development Bill Nighan added: “Even with extended sourcing timelines sometimes required for key components in the first article of a new linac system, simulation enables continuous development. By advancing design and validation ahead of hardware delivery, customers have significantly accelerated progress by several months and reduced integration risk.”
Picture: Bill Nighan and Mark Iskander from Teledyne Healthcare with Rok Štefanič and Ekaterina Beliaeva from Cosylab.
Read this report on page 13 of the July 2026 issue of RAD Magazine.
