MR-guided radiotherapy for prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in males in the UK with approximately 47,000 new cases per year, accounting for over a quarter of all new male cancer diagnoses. Localised prostate cancer can be managed with radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy, brachytherapy or active surveillance. More than 16,000 men have radical radiotherapy to the prostate every year.
Radiotherapy techniques have evolved over the last two decades and we are able to deliver increasingly complex radiotherapy plans to our patients. This has allowed us to escalate the dose to the tumour while minimising dose to normal tissue, resulting in improvements in toxicity rates and cancer control. In 2018, The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden Hospital were the first in the UK to treat a patient with the MR-linac. The Elekta Unity MR-linac combines a 7MV linear accelerator with 1.5T MRI technology.
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