Stereotactic radiation therapy is most commonly used to treat secondary tumours in the brain. Stereotactic radiation therapy is also used to treat some benign (non-cancerous) tumours such as meningiomas, pituitary adenomas and acoustic neuromas as well as some blood vessel conditions such as arteriovenous malformations.
Stereotactic radiation therapy for the brain will involve the making of a customised mask that will be used during treatment to ensure the patient’s head does not move during treatment allowing the machine to precisely target the tumour.
Compared to traditional radiation therapy for metastatic disease to the brain which involves treating the entire brain, stereotactic radiation therapy only targets the individual metastatic tumours with high doses. This provides less radiation to healthy brain tissue, reduces the chance of adverse intellectual function, reduces the impact of side effects (e.g. hair loss and headaches) providing improved quality of life for patients.
At Icon Cancer Centre we use state-of-the-art technologies which can deliver treatment to multiple brain tumours at one time. This reduces the need to treat multiple tumours separately, resulting in a much shorter treatment time for patients. Listed below are two examples of software used to help deliver this treatment. Other technologies may be used to treat multiple tumours, depending on the location of your treatment centre, but the software all work to achieve the best possible outcomes for patients.
Varian HyperArc
HyperArc is the latest technological advancement from Varian Medical Systems, and accurately targets multiple tumours while ensuring limited doses of radiation to surrounding healthy brain tissue. For more information on HyperArc, click here.
HyperArc technology is available at Icon Canberra, Icon Greenslopes, Icon Gold Coast Private and Icon Maroochydore.
BrainLab Elements
BrainLab Elements is an automatic brain metastases planning system. It brings together planning solutions to benefit clinicians and patients. It optimises and streamlines the planning processes based on each individual case allowing for high quality treatment plans for patients. It allows your care team to create the best possible plan to target tumours with precise accuracy.
BrainLab Elements is used at Icon Richmond and Icon Mulgrave.