Radialogica and ScientificRT Collaborate With IRCCS Sacro Cuore-Don Calabria Cancer Care Center to Validate SciMoCa Support for Elekta Unity MR-Linac

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Sep 21, 2021, 15:43 ET

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Radialogica LLC and ScientificRT GmbH announced they are collaborating with IRCCS Sacro Cuore-Don Calabria Cancer Care Center in Negrar, Verona, Italy, to define requirements and validate support for Elekta's Unity treatment machine in Radialogica's SciMoCa® plan QA software. The collaboration centers around the pre-clinical testing and clinical implementation of SciMoCa for Monte Carlo-based secondary dose calculation and patient-specific quality assurance for radiotherapy treatments delivered by the Unity MR-Linac.

SciMoCa combines the accuracy of Monte Carlo and the precision of custom machine-specific beam models to enhance the robustness and reliability of independent dose calculation and plan QA across all major linear accelerators as well as Cyberknife and Tomotherapy machines. The clinical demands associated with real-time plan adaptation for Unity treatment – namely, fast calculation and reporting speeds; streamlined workflow to enable quality assurance while the patient is in treatment position; and the accurate simulation of the effect of the strong magnetic field on dose deposition – impose unique demands that are particularly well suited to SciMoCa.

"Real-time plan adaptation on the MR-Linac is a radically new and sophisticated method which challenges the tenets of conventional quality assurance," said Prof. Filippo Alongi, Head of the Advanced Radiation Oncology department at IRCCS Sacro Cuore-Don Calabria Hospital and Associate Professor at the University of Brescia. "We need a tool that matches or even exceeds the accuracy of measurements, is capable of handling the magnetic field, fits into the time constraints of a real-time workflow, and looks deeper than a simple point dose comparison. We look forward to collaborating with our partners at Radialogica and ScientificRT to evaluate SciMoCa against these requirements in a pre-clinical environment."

"Since our beginning with Unity in October 2019, we've been looking for an independent dose calculation engine for fast online dose recalculation that matches the accuracy of Monaco," said Ruggero Ruggieri, MSc, Head of Medical Physics department at IRCCS Sacro Cuore-Don Calabria Cancer Care Center. "We hope this collaboration will soon make SciMoCa available for us and other Unity users".

While the application of Monte Carlo simulation techniques for volumetric dose calculation and comparison has transformed patient-specific QA for conventional linacs, the intense performance demands associated with real-time adaptive therapy have limited the use of such tools within the Unity workflow.

According to Dr. Markus Alber, Chief Executive Officer of ScientificRT, "Never before has the superiority of Monte Carlo as a dose computation method been more evident than for the Unity MR-Linac. The magnetic field distorts the paths of secondary electrons to an extent that cannot reasonably be modeled by any other dose calculation method. We therefore see the established SciMoCa algorithm as an ideal platform for a real-time QA solution for Unity."

"Support for Elekta Unity and other MR-Linacs represents a natural extension and evolution of SciMoCa's clinical capabilities," said Andrew Cowen, Chief Executive Officer of Radialogica. "We are delighted to partner with Prof. Alongi and his colleagues to validate this important new technology, and we look forward to supporting the broader Unity community in their goal to transform quality of care and outcomes for cancer patients."

IRCCS Sacro Cuore-Don Calabria Cancer Care Center will perform pre-clinical testing of SciMoCa with a specific focus on validating dose calculation accuracy and workflow efficiency. The validation effort is expected to commence in early 2022 and the first commercial release of SciMoCa Unity support is targeted for summer 2022.

Radialogica, a privately held company based in St. Louis, is a healthcare analytics company focused on radiation oncology for cancer patients. They provide software tools and analytics services to healthcare providers, payers and clinical trials sponsors with the goal of enhancing quality of care, improving patient outcomes, and reducing the burden of cancer survivorship.

ScientificRT, a privately held company based in Munich, is a scientific consulting and software development company specialized in medical physics. It has worked with the majority of global players in radiotherapy to provide tailored leading-edge software solutions and consulting for dose computation and dose optimization and maintains strong international links to academia.

CONTACT:
Andrew Cowen
[email protected]
800-515-9132

SOURCE Radialogica LLC