Author: Steven Jackson, Dr Rob Chuter

Excerpt: 

MR-guided radiotherapy is now being delivered in tens of centres around the world, with clinicians, clinical scientists, researchers, engineers and dual-trained radiographers working collaboratively to share their growing experience. The potential advantage of doing so is clear: the radiotherapy treatment will be based on a real-time picture of patient anatomy at high spatial resolution, with soft tissue contrast superior to CT.

The first MR-guided radiotherapy treatment was delivered by the ViewRay MRIdian cobalt machine in January 2014. The machine delivers radiotherapy from three Cobalt-60 sources mounted on a moveable gantry embedded in a 0.35T Siemens MR system. The Elekta Unity delivered its first set of MR-guided patient treatments between May and July 2017. It comprises a 7MV linear flattening filter free (FFF) linear accelerator (linac) with a 1.5T superconducting Philips MR system. The ViewRay MRIdian linac machine, a 6MV FFF beam with 0.35T Siemens MR scanner, treated its first patients soon after.