Elekta Unity MR-Linac Earns FDA Nod for Advanced Radiotherapy Motion Management

Elekta has earned U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for Comprehensive Motion Management (CMM) with True Tracking and automatic gating for its Elekta Unity MR-Linac.
 
Now, Elekta Unity can continuously calculate movement of the tumor anywhere in the body and automatically account for it. The new feature aims to let clinicians use an enhanced adaptive radiotherapy workflow to deal with moving organs treat patients more accurately.
 
CMM supports four workflows that help manage treatment of targets subject to either periodic breathing motion or random movements, including two free breathing workflows that remove the need for the patient to hold their breath. Integrated predictive algorithms also compensate for any system delays.
 
Using CMM, clinicians can also shift the beam to account for systematic changes in target position that may happen during the treatment session without re-imaging.
 
“Improving the accuracy of beam delivery is the key to increasing the therapeutic window in radiotherapy,” Dr. Lorraine Portelance, Vice Chair of Radiation Oncology at the University of Miami, told the press. “But of course, to truly improve accuracy we have to both track the motion and be able to quickly respond to it. These new motion management features do that and was a big reason we have decided to invest in this system.”
 
Carlos Castilleja, Elekta’s executive VP of Region Americas added: “We have the privilege to be working in radiotherapy, a field that helps people at their most vulnerable moment in life. To know that we can now bring a technology to the U.S. that really moves the needle in cancer care gives me and my whole team great satisfaction. We believe MR-guided therapy is going to play a major role in radiotherapy moving forward. This is evidenced by a large hospital network in New Jersey that is in the process of setting up three Elekta Unity systems, in addition to the more than 100 systems ordered or in use in the U.S. and around the world. We must also acknowledge the amazing scientists and engineers who made this extraordinary innovation possible.”
 
CMM enables increased precision with no additional setup time, no hardware to install, and no major changes to standard radiotherapy processes.