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Centre News and Events

The 2003/2004 Treatment Machine Improvement Program: A Historical Piece

3rd Aug 2006

Perth Radiation Oncology made a large investment in a treatment machine improvement program in 2003 and 2004. This project was made possible, in the main, through the commitment of the staff at PRO. In late 2003, Perth Radiation Oncology upgraded the two Elekta treatment machines at Royal Perth Hospital by replacing the treatment heads with new multi-leaf collimators (MLCs) and, in early 2004 an aging treatment machine was replaced with a modern Elekta Precise machine at the Wembley site. All three of the new and upgraded Elekta machines were installed with electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) and a fully computerised treatment communication system thereby providing essentially three identical modern machines across the two PRO sites. The three modernised components of the machines, the MLCs, EPIDs and computerised communication, enabled a more efficient and comfortable treatment for patients with treatment times being reduced and there being greater confidence in the accuracy and precision of treatment.

The steps involved in moving from the older machines to the new machines took many months, with a large effort being undertaken by Medical Physicists and Biomedical Engineers to install, test, and commission the machines for clinical use. All of the installation steps needed to be scheduled to minimise the impact on the availability of treatment machines to patients. The machine improvement program started in September 2003 with the installation of the computerised treatment communication system and the testing of this on the existing hardware prior to the MLC upgrades. This did not impact on the machine availability to patients, however, starting in October of that year one machine was taken off line in turn as the MLCs and EPIDs were installed, the radiation fields were measured and the treatment planning system commissioned for use on patients. The Medical Physicists established a comprehensive quality assurance program and the machines fully tested prior to release for patient use. Each machine took approximately two months to upgrade with the final machine at Wembley coming on line on 16 February 2004.

During the six months of the machine improvement program, while one of the treatment machines was unavailable at any one time, the Radiation Oncologists and Radiation Therapists worked hard over extended hours to ensure that there would be no reduction in the number of patients that could be treated. All members of staff at Perth Radiation Oncology were involved and committed in some way to the machine improvement program and many long hours had to be worked to meet patient demand.
The situation at the end of the process is the availability of three modern treatment machines that enable the intimate and efficient shaping of treatment fields to irradiate treatment volumes whilst exposing less normal tissue to large radiation doses than was possible with the older machines. This has significantly improved the quality of treatment available to patients and enabled new treatment modalities to be used, such as intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), that reduce the side effects of treatment.

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