Varian Medical Systems has introduced a ‘real-time’ brachytherapy treatment planning system that speeds up prostate cancer treatments and potentially reduces the time patients need to spend in hospital. The Vitesse 2.0 ultrasound-based treatment planning system, already evaluated and adopted by several leading cancer clinics, enables clinicians to complete two brachytherapy procedures a day on a patient rather than forcing longer hospital stays by spreading treatments over as many as three days.

Vitesse 2.0 enables clinicians to develop treatment plans which show the locations of radiation sources and dose distribution, using ultrasound images generated in the operating room rather than taking the time to move the patient to another room with a CT scanner for x-ray images.

The real-time nature of Vitesse 2.0 enables clinicians to plan needle locations, monitor and adjust the positions as the needles are inserted, identify the final needle position in the patient and export the entire dataset to Varian’s BrachyVision 3D planning system.

Studies show that radiotherapy is more effective when doses are delivered more quickly.