Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre will join a consortium sponsored by Philips Healthcare parent Royal Philips Electronics and radiation oncology firm Elekta to validate the clinical potential of MRI-guided radiation therapy.
Sunnybrook is the fourth institution to sign a research agreement for the project, which merges radiation therapy and MRI into a single investigational system. Other participating centers are University Medical Center Utrecht, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital.
Marrying a 1.5-tesla MRI scanner with a radiation therapy system will provide soft-tissue and tumor visualization while tracking motion dynamically. The technology is designed to allow doctors to delivery radiation in real-time under MR guidance for the most precise cancer treatments possible.
Sunnybrook, the sixth largest cancer center in North America, said it has identified several areas for research, and it will bring a team of physicists, engineers, and clinicians to work on validation of the technology through clinical trials.
