What is Tomotherapy?

TomoTherapy is a new way to deliver radiation treatment for cancer. TomoTherapy literally means "slice therapy," and gets its name from tomography, or cross-sectional imaging. The TomoTherapy Hi•Art System^® delivers a very sophisticated form of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), and combines treatment planning, CT image-guided patient positioning, and treatment delivery into one integrated system.

The equipment used for TomoTherapy looks much like a computed tomography (CT) system: the patient lies on a couch that moves continuously through a rotating ring gantry. The gantry houses a linear accelerator, which delivers radiation in the shape of a fan beam as the ring is turning. With the couch moving at the same time the gantry is rotating, the radiation beam makes a spiral (or helical) pattern around the patient, targeting tumors with optimal levels of radiation while minimizing the dose to healthy areas.