MR-Guided Radiation Therapy for Rectum | Products

Safely escalate dose for organ preservation

Treatment for rectal cancer typically involves a course of radiation therapy in combination with chemotherapy and/or surgery. Conventional, CBCT-based treatments provide limited image resolution at the time of treatment, requiring the use of large safety margins due to target and OAR motion. This also limits dose escalation and the potential for a complete pathological response.

There is growing interest in MR-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) to reduce RT-related toxicity and allow dose escalation approaches. This could increase the likelihood of complete clinical response and reduce the need for surgery. With Elekta Unity you can:

Safely escalate dose to the tumor and consider more rectal cancer patients for organ preservation strategies.

Clinical benefits

Elekta Unity MR-guided radiation therapy for rectal cancer

With superior real-time imaging and daily online plan adaptation, Elekta Unity allows you to safely escalate dose to the tumor and consider more rectal cancer patients for organ preservation strategies.

Improve local control with safe, anatomy-adaptive dose escalation
Use smaller margins to spare healthy tissue and reduce side effects
Preserve rectal function and improve quality of life
Offer an effective alternative to surgery
Assess and adapt to early treatment response

Contouring and dose plan on T2W acquired on Elekta Unity MR-Linac

See the difference for rectal radiation therapy treatments

Ensure daily precision

Elekta Unity allows you to reduce toxicity and improve local control with daily MR imaging and dose reshaping to allow for interfraction changes in anatomy, such as rectal and bladder filling.

Images courtesy of UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands

Escalate tumor dose

Elekta Unity allows you to maximize complete response rates and organ preservation using precise MR-guided dose escalation.

Rectal cancer patient with complete clinical response

Images courtesy of Tübingen University Hospital, Germany

Reduce treatment margins

Daily MR-guided online plan adaptation with Elekta Unity accounts for interfraction motion and enables PTV margins to be reduced.

"MR-guided RT makes it possible to reduce the radiation field for rectal tumors by a third compared with compared with conventional techniques, which may result in less RT-related toxicity and a better quality of life

Lois Daamen et al. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ctro.2023.100721

Clinical evidence

Learn more about how MR-guided radiation therapy is benefiting rectal cancer patients.

Clinical study

Video

Webinar

Article

Bibliography

Organ preservation trial

Feasibility and outcome data from the first rectal cancer patients treated with dose escalated radiotherapy using an MR-guided online response-adaptive workflow demonstrated high complete response rates, excellent organ preservation and limited side effects.

Clinical study

MOMENTUM study

This multi-center MOMENTUM study on patient-reported outcomes in a large cohort of rectal cancer patients demonstrated that MR-guided radiation therapy resulted in improved symptom management and stabilized or improved quality of life outcome scores after 12 months of follow-up.

Clinical study

Online adaptive MRgRT study

In this study of 43 patients, the treatment of rectal cancer using online adaptive MR-guided radiotherapy on Elekta Unity is tolerated well by patients and daily adaptation allowed PTV margins to be reduced significantly compared to conventional RT techniques.

Clinical study

Treatment response study

The ability to see changes in diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) for rectal cancer patients treated using a MR-Linac demonstrated promise in determining treatment response. These findings could help to guide treatment adaptation with dose escalation with the aim of improving treatment related outcomes in rectal cancer patients.

Clinical study