Catalan Oncology Center transforms their planning efficiency, enabling more precise and personalized radiotherapy
For more than 20 years, Elekta and the Catalan Oncology Center in Perpignan, France, have partnered to support high-quality, precise radiotherapy for patients.
Today, the center uses several Elekta solutions, including the linear accelerator Elekta Evo with Iris AI-enhanced imaging, and most recently the Elekta ONE Planning software, helping the clinical staff work more efficiently while enabling more personalized care.
Accelerating treatment planning - no more backlogs
The center has experienced significant benefits with Elekta ONE Planning, resulting in simpler, faster commissioning and treatment planning workflows.
“We installed two accelerators in two months. Before, it took three to four months to get machines up and running,” said Vincent Plagnol, medical physicist at the Catalan Oncology Center, Perpignan.
"Previously, our commissioning process relied on multiple measurements and machine-specific models. With Elekta ONE Planning, the process is smarter, faster and easier to manage. This shift has streamlined operations and strengthened clinical confidence in how radiotherapy is planned and delivered across the center."
Since introducing the platform in late 2025, the center has also seen major improvement in planning performance through GPU-based computing. This accelerated processing has enabled the center to completely eliminate its treatment planning and contouring backlogs.
From one hundred pending treatment plans to zero backlog
“Elekta ONE Planning has completely changed the way we work, thanks to GPU-based servers. We started using it in November 2025. At that time, we had around a hundred pending treatment plans and contours to process. Today, patients can be scanned in the morning and we process the contours and treatment plans the same day, in real time, with no backlog. ”
“We have achieved roughly a 60-fold reduction in computation time: calculations that used to take me 2 to 3 hours are now completed in less than 10 minutes.”
With faster performance, a streamlined workflow, and proven accuracy and reliability, Elekta ONE Planning enables the clinical team to make quicker, data-driven decisions that support high standards of care.
Advancing precise radiotherapy through adaptive radiotherapy and high-definition imaging
Modern radiotherapy has evolved significantly through imaging, moving from 2D approaches to image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT), which enables daily anatomical verification and more precise dose delivery. This evolution has supported both dose escalation and reduced toxicity.
In this light, the clinical team mentions the quality of Iris high-definition, AI-enhanced imaging, integrated into Elekta Evo, which provides clinicians with high-quality CBCT.
“Iris offers image quality almost equivalent to a CT scanner. The resolution is fantastic”
“Iris offers image quality almost equivalent to a CT scanner. The resolution is fantastic. It is currently used for pelvic treatments and opens interesting perspectives for online adaptive workflows.”
Great imaging is the cornerstone of adaptive radiotherapy. The center is currently working with offline adaptive radiotherapy using Elekta Evo’s CBCT imaging. This approach allows clinicians to review the delivered dose, assess organ exposure, and determine when replanning is needed. This ultimately helps avoid unnecessary interruptions or an additional CT-scan for replanning and enables a more precise and personalized patient treatment.
For Vincent Plagnol, adaptive radiotherapy is especially valuable in the context of hypofractionation, where delivering high doses in fewer treatment sessions leaves little room for error.
“Practically all of our patients are treated with hypofractionation. This personalization will, in the long term, allow for a reduction in treatment margins related to repositioning uncertainties and the patient's anatomy. This will lead to a decrease in toxicity and, above all, better local control.”
“When we deliver ultra-hypofractionation (for example, three high-dose fractions), there is no room for error. In hypofractionation, if we make a mistake, the error is irretrievable. Adaptive radiotherapy contributes to this control by allowing the right dose to be delivered to the right location for the patient at a given time point.”
“These technological advances have made it possible to increase the effective dose from 64 Gy to the equivalent of 80 Gy, while significantly reducing toxicity for prostate cancer patients”.
The journey towards online adaptive radiotherapy
The next step in the center’s adaptive radiotherapy approach is online adaptation, where treatment plans can be adjusted in real time during each treatment session to account for daily anatomical changes, such as tumor shrinkage, bladder filling and weight fluctuations.
“The only way to ensure we give the correct dose is to adapt daily to the patient’s anatomy to account for daily anatomical changes. This represents a major step forward in radiotherapy.”
Iris image quality combined with the experience gained through offline adaptive radiotherapy and the efficiency gained with Elekta ONE Planning are helping the team build the foundations for online adaptive radiotherapy.
“The prerequisite for implementing online adaptive radiotherapy is to master offline adaptive radiotherapy. The latter allows, retrospectively, to verify whether the treatment has been correctly delivered and whether the organs have received the planned dose. Once we validate all calculations on CBCT, we will have taken a major step toward online adaptive radiotherapy.”
With the center's planned implementation of online adaptive radiotherapy on Evo with the Elekta ONE Online integrated solution, the team first aims to “ensure patient comfort and to complete the procedure within a reasonable time frame, between 20 and 30 minutes.”
“We will start with the male pelvis, then assess if this approach can be adapted to other locations, ensuring that everything goes smoothly and accurately as planned.”
The growing role of AI in radiotherapy
AI is playing a key role in advancing radiotherapy and enabling the adoption of adaptive radiotherapy. Both the imaging enhancements provided by Iris and the time-saving auto-contouring capabilities of Elekta ONE Planning are supported by AI, demonstrating how artificial intelligence is being increasingly used in radiotherapy.
“It will make treatment plans independent of the operator and standardize workflows. Extended to machines, it will automate linear accelerator settings and help prevent breakdowns.”
At the same time, Vincent Plagnol emphasizes the continued importance of human oversight in radiotherapy care.
“I think that AI will never take on the responsibility of our profession. There will always be human oversight behind the algorithms for the responsibility of the delivered dose and the adjustment of the machines.”
Elekta Evo and Elekta ONE may not be available in all countries. Please contact an Elekta representative for availability
