Brainlab ExacTrac Integrates Varian’s PerfectPitch to Enable Highly Accurate Radiosurgery Treatments With Advanced 6D Correctional Accuracy

Brainlab released ExacTrac® 6.2, a new version of its successful room-based patient positioning system providing full interoperability with the PerfectPitch™ six-degrees-of-freedom couch from Varian Medical Systems. This full integration enables customers who have a Varian TrueBeam™ linear accelerator equipped with PerfectPitch and ExacTrac to reap the combined benefits of the two systems. Clinicians are now able to utilize the highly accurate patient positioning and monitoring capabilities of ExacTrac with the precise 6D robotic alignment of PerfectPitch for all radiosurgery cases in the brain and body.

“With a rise in non-coplanar treatments and the usage of single isocenter radiosurgery, the interaction of 6D correction through PerfectPitch with the room-based imaging of ExacTrac will allow our customers to create accurate and reproducible treatments,” said Stephan Froehlich, Vice President, R&D Radiosurgery, Brainlab.

The first installations for the new integrated environment were completed in the United States at The Hospital of Central Connecticut and at Royal Surrey Hospital, in the United Kingdom. Successful patient treatments were reported at both institutions. Dr. Tom Jordan, Head of Radiotherapy Physics at Royal Surrey Hospital commented, “Combining these two technologies is what I always wanted for my radiosurgery system. I can now finally utilize ExacTrac and OBI interchangeably for initial setup and continue to monitor with ExacTrac for intra-fraction motion as we rotate the couch.”

“For our CNS patients we want to carefully evaluate patient motion during treatment,” said Neal Goldberg, MD, Chief Radiation Oncologist at The Hospital of Central Connecticut. “Having the ability to always correct deviations with 6D sub-millimetric accuracy, independent of gantry and couch position, gives me the confidence I needed to treat any tumors in the brain and spine.”

ExacTrac by Brainlab is an in-room X-Ray based positioning and monitoring system that detects intra-fractional tumor motion during treatment delivery, regardless of the couch angle or gantry position. Instantaneous X-Ray imaging with proprietary 6D fusion provides fast and highly accurate positioning information and reduces the possibility of geographical miss due to patient motion or internal anatomical shifts.