GammaPod™

The ability to safely and confidently deliver a focal dose of radiation to a target within the breast is giving clinicians the opportunity to take breast radiotherapy to new levels.

With GammaPod™, radiation oncologists have a new tool for delivering ultra-accelerated courses of adjuvant stereotactic partial breast irradiation, reducing tumor bed boosts to a single fraction for patients receiving whole breast irradiation and neoadjuvant treatments at ablative dose levels.

How It Works

GammaPod uses a multi-source cobalt-60 system.

During treatment, the system rotates continuously, generating thousands of different beam entry angles that converge to create a single intense focal point, delivering the entire dose to the target while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue.

The 25-mm and 15-mm collimators change dynamically during treatment.

At the same time, the table’s movement allows the target to be moved through the focal spot in three dimensions, enabling true dynamic dose painting.

In this way, the entire prescribed dose is concentrated on the target, ensuring maximum treatment efficacy and minimizing exposure of the surrounding healthy tissues as much as possible.

Stereotactic radiation therapy requires a high degree of precision to ensure accurate dose delivery.

GammaPod uses a custom-designed stereotactic positioning and localization system called the “Breast Cup System,” which provides secure breast immobilization. It is a first-of-its-kind vacuum-assisted dual-cup system that adheres noninvasively to the breast.

The dual-cup design of the GammaPod™ Breast Cup System allows, with a dedicated suction pump, the air between the cups to be evacuated, ensuring immobility and allowing the breast to be separated from other vital tissues.

How It Works

• Patients are custom fit with the appropriately sized inner cup

• Inner cup is joined via a silicone flange to a rigid outer cup containing an embedded stereotactic fiducial wire

• Adhesive on the flange helps the device adhere to the patient

• Attached suction pump evacuates the air from between the cups to provide a stable immobilization.

Clinical trials have found that prone positioning for breast cancer radiotherapy offers multiple benefits.1 The affected breast naturally falls away from chest wall and treatments can be designed to limit dose to the heart and lungs.

The GammaPod™ uses prone patient loaders in the imaging and treatment rooms to quickly and comfortably set up patients in the prone position. Providing reproducible setup at the time of imaging and treatment obviates the need for in-room image guidance.

How It Works

• Patients step onto the loader wearing the breast cup, which fits through an aperture in the couch and is securely docked in place

• Smooth rotation of the couch seamlessly moves patients from the standing to prone position

• For the Imager Loader, the CT table receives the couch and patient, which is then positioned for scanning

• For the Treatment Loader, the GammaPod receives the couch and patient, which is then positioned for treatment.

The GammaPod™ treatment planning system (TPS) uses sophisticated Monte Carlo dose calculations, the gold standard in radiotherapy, to create a dynamic travel path along which the couch will during the delivery of the prescribed dose.  

To accommodate the scan-plan-treat clinical workflow, the TPS provides clinicians with tools for quickly creating a new treatment plan each day based on changes to the target and anatomy.

How It Works

• Single-click localization of the stereotactic fiducial wire

• Intuitive contouring tools for defining the GTV with interpolation between image slices

• Easy creation of uniform margin expansion to define PTV

• Rapid optimization based on plan goals

• A highly conformal dose distribution with sharp falloff.
• Uniform target coverage.
• Low doses to the whole breast volume.
• Low heart doses, even with minimal distance from the target.