University Hospitals (UH) Seidman Cancer Center will be the first research and teaching hospital in Ohio to offer MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy and noninvasive MR-guided radiosurgery with ViewRay’s MRIdian system.

In addition to facilitating high-quality anatomical visualization, the MRIdian system allows clinicians to adapt radiotherapy plans while the patient is on the table by defining tight treatment margins and using real-time continuous tracking to precisely target cancers and protect healthy organs and tissues from unnecessary radiation. It also shortens ablative radiation doses to five or fewer sessions, without implanted markers.

UH has purchased four systems, as part of a master agreement, to treat patients with pancreas, prostate, kidney, gynecological, lung, liver, breast, brain, spine and oligometastatic cancers.

Along with ViewRay, it will also assess the system’s noninvasive form of MR-guided radiosurgery against traditional surgical methods and ablative modalities such as HIFU, cryotherapy and radiofrequency ablation.

"Because MRIdian enables delivery of ablative radiation doses with tighter margins, we will be able to treat complex cancer cases, including inoperable tumors and patients who aren't good candidates for surgery," said Dr. Jordan Winter, chief of the division of surgical oncology at UH Cleveland Medical Center and director of surgical services at UH Seidman Cancer Center, in a statement.

MRIdian’s real-time continuous tracking allows for automatic gating of the radiation beam if the target moves outside the margins. This maintains precise dose delivery, while sparing healthy tissues and critical structures, minimizing toxicities associated with conventional radiotherapy.

The solution has treated more than 27,000 patients, and there are currently 56 units installed at hospitals worldwide.

Viewray recently installed two in the U.K. at comprehensive cancer centers in Guildford and Birmingham for GenesisCare, the largest global provider of cancer services across the U.S., U.K., Spain and Australia. This doubled the number of MRIdian systems in the U.K. and brought the total number in GenesisCare’s global network to six.

"MRIdian expands the treatment options available to our patients, particularly those with tough-to-treat cancers whose options may have previously been limited, such as pancreatic ultra-central lung cancer tumors,” said Winter.

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