Nucletron BV announced the first clinical treatments combining the advanced inverse planning features of the PLATO treatment planning system with a Siemens linear accelerator.

The Radiotherapy Department of the Virgen Macarena Hospital chose precise Intensity Modulation Radiation Therapy (IMRT) for the treatment of a patient with prostate cancer. The IMRT technique allows the hospital to improve local tumor control and decrease adverse side effects of the treatment. The treatment was designed using inverse treatment planning on the Nucletron PLATO system, allowing higher radiation dose to be given to the tumor and minimizing dose to radiation sensitive organs. IMRT is of interest in the treatment of prostate cancer because of the proximity of radiation sensitive organs that are difficult to avoid using conventional treatments.

The treatment was the first to use the Nucletron planning system linked with a Primus linear accelerator from Siemens. The linear accelerator is equipped with a multi-leaf collimator (MLC), which shapes and modulates the intensity of the radiation beam during the treatment. The complex sequence of movements of the MLC is calculated on the PLATO planning system and transferred electronically to the control system of the linear accelerator.

In IMRT, the treatment radiation beams are divided into a series of small fields, whose irregular shape is determined by the multi-leaf collimator. Accurately modelling the combined effect of many small, irregular fields in order to provide independent verification of the PLATO treatment planning system and treatment on the linear accelerator is a major step towards the routine application of this new treatment method.

Nucletron also produces planning and treatment systems for brachytherapy, used for the treatment of prostate and other cancers. With brachytherapy, radioactive sources are positioned in the tumour to be treated, also giving a highly conformal dose distribution. "Nucletron is proud of its innovations in radiotherapy products that help fight cancer. The clinical use of PLATO's inverse treatment planning software in Sevilla and other centres demonstrates that these new and complex techniques can be widely used to benefit patients," said Rudolf Scholte, Managing Director of Nucletron.