The Very Latest In Radiation Therapy: IGRT & IMRT

Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)
Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) is the very latest in radiation therapy and is available at Health Pavilion North. IGRT allows clinicians to more accurately track and target tumors with unprecedented precision by taking some very important pictures.

IGRT is found in the Cancer Center’s new linear accelerator at Health Pavilion North. The linear accelerator includes an automated On-Board Imager system, which makes it possible for clinicians to take high-resolution three-dimensional pictures of a tumor site, in real time, during a treatment session. Since tumors move within the body all the time due to normal body functions, such as breathing and digestion, this added ability is a huge enhancement.

Before IGRT, radiation oncologists and therapists had to deal with the natural movement of tumors by treating a margin of healthy tissue around the tumor. But with IGRT precision tracking, that margin is reduced.

Image-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) uses advanced computer programming to divide each radiation beam into multiple rays, or “beamlets,” and assigns different intensities (beam strengths) to individual rays. This allows the intensity of each beam to be adjusted in proportion to tumor thickness. Thus, where the tumor is thickest, the radiation intensity is highest. Where the tumor is the thinnest, the radiation intensity is lower.

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