Technology of advanced radiotherapy equipment including ion beam therapy equipment

In recent years, several technological developments have taken place in the design and capabilities of radiotherapy equipment especially beam delivery devices. Radiotherapy beam delivery devices can in general be classified as teleisotope machines, medical electron linear accelerators and ion beam accelerators (proton and heavy ion). Among teleisotope machines, we have conventional telecobalt unit which has recently been equipped with multileaf collimator (MLC), specialised telecobalt machine such as Gamma Knife (various variates) and super specialised machine such as View Ray. The conventional telecobalt machine, which contains a single high activity source, is still the work horse of middle and lower income countries. Gamma knife, which contains multiple cobalt sources (ranging from 30 to 201) and specialised narrow field collimators, is also being used popularly for treatment of mainly intracranial tumours. Many versions of this equipment are available globally. Super specialised teleisotope machine (the View Ray) is the new addition in the armamentarium of external beam therapy. This device contains three source heads at 120 degree apart and diverging multileaf collimators plus an on-board magnetic resonance (MR) imaging device. This super specialised teleisotope machine can be used for treating varieties of cancer cases by applying the techniques of intensity modulated radiotherapy, stereotactic body radiotherapy and on-couch adaptive radiotherapy