Elekta, a human care company pioneering significant innovations and clinical solutions for treating cancer and brain disorders, has announced that using Agility, the company's latest multileaf collimator (MLC) innovation, patients at St. James’s University Hospital were the first in the world to benefit from this modern advancement in the treatment of cancer. With twice the number of leaves typical of many standard MLCs, Agility precisely sculpts delivered radiation to the unique contours of the tumour while reducing the risk of exposure to surrounding healthy tissue.

A multileaf collimator, a device made up of numerous individual tungsten leaves, is commonly used to shape beams of radiation as therapeutic doses are delivered from different angles around the patient.

“This truly represents a radical improvement in the way we deliver radiotherapy, combining both speed and precision in tailoring the radiation beams to the exact shape of the patient’s tumour,” says Vivian Cosgrove, Ph.D., head of radiotherapy physics at St. James’s. “Agility enables a faster delivery of advanced radiotherapy treatments. Reduced treatment times will lead to a better experience for the patient and will improve access to the technology for the benefit of more of our patients.”

The product of an extensive R&D effort by Elekta to transform cancer care, the leaves of Agility are also capable of travelling at twice the speed of other MLCs commonly used in radiotherapy. This unique capability supports an added capacity for precision beam shaping as well as shorter treatment times, increasing both patient comfort and the clinic’s delivery efficiency. Moreover, relying on a new and innovative design, Agility MLC has demonstrated extraordinarily low leaf transmission, to reduce the patient’s non-therapeutic radiation exposure.

Recently, Agility was awarded the CE Mark, enabling medical centres across Europe and other regions to adopt the technology for their cancer patients.

“Agility’s versatility combined with the potential patient benefits have generated much enthusiasm and market demand,” says Olof Sandén, Elekta’s executive vice president, Europe and AFLAME. “We look forward to many more cancer patients benefiting from this breakthrough technology.”