Finding a Better Way to Deliver Radiotherapy, The More Human Way
Finding a Better Way.
There is growing evidence that particle therapy offers important treatment options that can benefit a very large number of cancer patients.
The main impediment to treating every patient that could benefit from particle therapy is the cost of the technology and the enormous footprint of the average treatment facility. That is, until now… Leo Cancer Care was born out of a desire to expand the availability of proton therapy to every patient, in every city that can benefit from this important technology.
At Leo Cancer Care we have taken everything we know that works when treating cancer with radiation. Everything that has been proven through years of research and technological advancements and we have completely re-thought them.
We realized that every new idea, every new approach, new technology and device all started with one thing in common. One thing that has not changed in more than half a century, the recumbent patient. You see, radiation therapy has been locked into the world of recumbency based on devices that utilized long treatment times when patients were sicker than today because of limited diagnostic capabilities. As diagnostic imaging tools became available, they followed the horizontal thought process.
When proton therapy devices were being planned and designed it was believed that the only way to deliver protons was with a gantry-based device, a gantry on a scale never before seen in healthcare. This meant designing a gantry that measured 10 meters or more across and could weigh 75 tons or more. These massive structures were made to rotate around the patient meaning facilities would need to be constructed to match the scale of the equipment and infrastructure.
At Leo Cancer Care we started by simply asking why? Then we set about finding a better way. That one question led to the development of the most advanced patient positioning system in the world, one that re-imagined treatment delivery. That question led us to believe that upright treatments was the only way for protons to flourish and grow much the way conventional photon systems did. We also realized that moving the patient to an upright posture would lead to lower cost treatment rooms and centers.
We Have Found a Better Way.
A way to bring protons to more people in more places than before. We have taken advantage of new technology and are pioneering some of our own. We have found a way to make proton therapy more affordable and accessible.
We believe upright treatments will improve patient comfort and reduce motion whilst empowering patients to face their cancer treatment, eye to eye with their clinician. We then took that even further and thought why not rotate the patient instead of having a huge gantry? So, we gave our upright patient positioning system 360 degrees of rotation and 6 degrees of freedom. We believe rotating the patient will accomplish todays treatment objectives in a simpler, faster and more cost effective way, whilst ensuring that clinicians can achieve the positioning needed to treat almost all cancers without compromise.
Of course, moving to a new upright treatment paradigm required us to solve the missing piece of the puzzle, imaging. We know imaging is a critical part of radiation therapy. Imaging drives localization, treatment planning, re-planning and setup accuracy. That’s why we have developed the world’s first upright, fan beam CT scanner made specifically for radiation oncology.
Our CT can scan from mid-thigh to the top of the head with the patient in a variety of positions. Dual energy and soft tissue imaging provides advanced oncology imaging in the same upright treatment posture as our upright patient positioning system. Best of all, our small footprint makes it easy to install inside many horizontal beam treatment rooms which can be significantly smaller than rotating gantry rooms.
