The first patient in the U.S. has been treated with Brainlab’s Automatic Brain Metastases Planning software at Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience in Philadelphia. All five of the patient’s brain metastases were treated in under 20 minutes.
Traditionally, it can take up to three hours to treat brain metastases with the standard whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) treatment. With WBRT, the entire brain receives low doses of radiation over many sessions, which can cause cognitive deficits.
The software can automatically generate a treatment plan in less than two minutes. It uses a unique algorithm that allows for the delivery of highly conformal single-session treatments that helps to reduce the amount of dose that is spread to the healthy surrounding tissue.
"With traditional stereotactic radiosurgery techniques, each metastasis is planned and treated individually, thereby increasing treatment time,” Dr. Wenyin Shi, assistant professor of radiation oncology and medical director of radiation oncology at Jefferson Hospital, said in a statement. “The Brainlab software allows us to deliver a conformal cranial SRS plan with time-efficient precision targeting of several metastases in a single session.”
Jefferson Hospital will continue to use the software along with Brainlab’s ExacTrac patient positioning and monitoring solution to treat up to 10 metastatic tumors at once. They believe it will help prevent unnecessary brain function side effects such as memory loss and cognitive deficits that often occur with WBRT.
