ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRAY) today announced that Helsinki University Hospital has purchased a MRIdian® System to offer patients MR-guided radiation therapy at the Comprehensive Cancer Center in the new Bridge Hospital.
The Comprehensive Cancer Center is Finland’s largest and most versatile cancer treatment center. The center provides personalized treatment and features modern state-of-the-art radiation therapy technology. The Comprehensive Cancer Center is the first Nordic cancer center to have undergone accreditation through the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) and achieved the highest possible status of a Comprehensive Cancer Center. The center’s expertise is internationally recognized and its treatment results are world-class. The MRIdian system will enable the team at the Comprehensive Cancer Center to offer the latest MR-guided radiation therapy technology to patients seeking personalized cancer treatment including lung, prostate, pancreas, liver cancers, and other small tumors in abdominal and pelvic areas.
“MRIdian will bring powerful capabilities to our radiation oncology department, including the ability to deliver ablative dose with tight margins through real-time soft-tissue visualization and on-table adaptive therapy,” said Professor Mikko Tenhunen. “With MRIdian, we anticipate being able to treat many tumors that we deemed were previously untreatable with radiation therapy, expanding the options available to cancer patients throughout Finland.”
“We are proud to have Helsinki University Hospital join the MRIdian community,” said Paul Ziegler, Chief Commercial Officer at ViewRay. “As the first to offer Finland’s patients the benefits of MRIdian SMART (stereotactic MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy), they will stand at the forefront of Finnish cancer care as they treat and prove what others can’t.”
The MRIdian system provides oncologists outstanding anatomical visualization through diagnostic-quality MR images and the ability to adapt a radiation therapy plan to the targeted cancer with the patient on the table. This combination helps physicians to define tight treatment margins to avoid unnecessary radiation exposure of vulnerable nearby organs-at-risk and allows the delivery of ablative radiation doses in five or fewer treatment sessions, without relying on implanted markers. By providing real-time continuous tracking of the target and surrounding healthy tissues, MRIdian enables automatic gating of the radiation beam if the target moves outside the user-defined margins. This provides for delivery of the prescribed dose to the target, while sparing surrounding healthy tissue and critical structures, which results in minimizing toxicities typically associated with conventional radiation therapy.
Nearly 16,000 patients have been treated with MRIdian SMART (Stereotactic MR-guided Adaptive Radiotherapy). Currently, 46 MRIdian systems are installed at hospitals around the world where they are used to treat a wide variety of solid tumors and are the focus of numerous ongoing research efforts. MRIdian has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, scientific meeting abstracts, and presentations.