Radiation Oncology at Yashoda Hospital

Innovative techniques and advanced technology support the comprehensive care at Yashoda Cancer Institute. Our complete care for our patients goes beyond the diagnosis and treatment approaches. We aim to ensure that every patient under our care provided with the full continuum of emergency healthcare services. Our experts use state-of-the-art technology, infrastructure and facilities comprise of offerings important for a faster and healthier recovery cycle.

What is External Beam Radiation?

In cancer treatment, the predominant form of radiation therapy is external radiation, also known as external beam radiation. This type of radiation therapy is precisely administered using advanced radiation technology. By directing the radiation beam specifically to the cancer site, these machines optimize the delivery of radiation to the cancer cells, while minimizing its impact on surrounding healthy tissues.

What is External Beam Radiation Therapy?

External beam radiation therapy uses a high-energy x-ray machine - called a linear accelerator - to direct radiation to the tumor.

This outpatient cancer treatment lasts a few minutes, a few times a week over several months.

Before your radiation treatment begins, your radiation oncologist will:

• Pinpoint the location of your tumor.
• Take an image of the tumor.
• Decide your course of treatment.

Types of External Beam Radiation Therapy

Yashoda Cancer Center offers many types of external beam radiation therapy:

IMRT (Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy)

IMRT is a newer and most sophisticated way of delivering radiotherapy. To treat almost all types of solid tumours arising from Brain, Head and Neck, Lungs, Lymphomas and Gynaecological Cancers, surgeons around the world are using IMRT while minimizing the exposure to surrounding tissues.

IMRT uses a 3D scan of the body to guide the radiation to the tumour from many different angles, rotation around the patient in an arc shape. At Yashoda CC, surgeons use VMAT (Volumetric Arc Therapy) techniques to deliver IMRT using Trilogy Tx Linear Accelerator machine. The advantage of this technique is that it reduces the treatment time to a few minutes and integral doses to one-tenth.

IGRT (Image-Guided Radiation Therapy)

To improve the chance of killing cancer precisely, IGRT is an evolution in radiotherapy. It reduces the risk and severity of therapy-induced complications. Using image technologies like PET, MRI, and CT, IGRT treats cancer cells more accurately and safely. It is the most suitable type of treatment for lungs, Prostate, Urinary Bladder, and Gynaecological cancers.

The main advantages include:

• Delivers radiation of higher doses to target cancer
• Avoid causing harm to healthy tissue
• Improve the precision, accuracy and result outcomes of treatment
• Reduce the side effects of radiation to a minimum

What Is RapidArc Radiation Therapy Treatment?

RapidArc radiotherapy technology, produced by Varian Medical Systems, is an extremely fast and precise form of image-guided, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT).

IMRT shapes the radiation dose so that it conforms closely to the 3D shape of your tumor. This means more radiation to the tumor, and potentially less to nearby healthy tissue.

How Does RapidArc Radiotherapy Technology Work?

RapidArc's image-guided technology:

• Delivers complete modulated fields with one or two rotations of the treatment machine around you.
• Can treat the entire tumor volume with the radiation dose during one revolution of the machine.
• Involves varying - or modulating - the intensity of the radiation therapy (in this case, high-energy x-rays) for treating cancer.

RapidArc Radiotherapy Treatment: What to Expect

The team of radiation therapists and physicists at our cancer center:

• Uses computer-generated images to custom-design your treatment plan.
• Delivers a precise, tightly focused radiation dose that conforms to the shape of your tumor.
• Limits the amount of radiation that reaches surrounding healthy tissues.

A major benefit of RapidArc is the speed of a treatment.

RapidArc delivers radiation with a single, 360-degree rotation of the linear accelerator. This takes less than minutes.

Stereotactic Radiotherapy (SRS/SRT)?

Stereotactic radiotherapy gives radiotherapy from many different angles around the body. The beams meet at the tumour. This means the tumour receives a high dose of radiation and the tissues around it receive a much lower dose. This lowers the risk of side effects.

Usually you have between 1 and 8 treatments.

The high dose of radiation delivered to the affected area causes tumors to shrink and blood vessels to close off over time following treatment, robbing the tumor of its blood supply.

The precision of stereotactic radiosurgery means there's minimal damage to the healthy surrounding tissues. In most cases, radiosurgery has a lower risk of side effects compared with other types of traditional surgery or radiation therapy.

What is the Halcyon E LINAC Radiation Therapy System?

The Halcyon E radiation therapy system is designed to deliver precise image-guided, volumetric, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) up to four times faster than standard technology.

How Does the Halcyon Radiation Therapy System Work?

The Halcyon Radiation Therapy System delivers image-guided intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) or volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) up to four times faster than standard technology.

The system captures either two dimensional or cone-beam CT images for guidance in less than 15 seconds.

It also delivers varying -or modulating - intensities of radiation (in this case, high-energy x-rays) for cancer treatments that last about two minutes per session.

Halcyon Radiotherapy Treatment: What should one anticipate?

If your radiation oncologist decides that Halcyon therapy is right for you, the team of radiation oncologists will:

• Use computer-generated 3D images to custom-design your treatment plan
• Deliver a precise, tightly focused radiation dose that conforms to the shape of your tumor while minimizing impact on surrounding healthy tissue

The major benefit of Halcyon is its efficiency. Images can be acquired in less than 15 seconds, and treatment can be administered in about two minutes, minimizing your time on the table and optimizing the delivery of your treatment plan.

Halcyon also offers enhanced features for patient comfort, including:

• Fast positioning, imaging and treatment delivery minimize patients time on the table
• Smooth couch and gantry motions powered by linear brushless motors
• Spacious, 100 cm diameter bore with ambient lighting for patient comport
• Approachable patient friendly design

Halcyon offers Speed without Compromise:

Faster treatments while maintaining high quality:

• No imager deployment speeds up imaging process
• Accelerated RapidArc delivery at 2 RPM
• 4 RPM gantry speed saves time between fields
• Fast MLC motion allows for treatment to be delivered at close to maximum dose rate

Halcyon offers High Quality of Care:

Optimized image-guided IMRT and RapidArc radiotherapy:

• 6MV FFF beam makes IMRT and RapidArc achievable for more patients
• 100% IGRT enables precise delivery of IMRT and RapidArc techniques
• 3D CBCT allows visualization of internal anatomy
• kV CBCT offers large field of view and improves soft tissue definition
• Iterative CBCT utilizes statistical reconstruction methods to increase image quality

Where Can I Receive Halcyon Treatment?

Halcyon treatment is available at our center.

Halycon E is a trademark of Varian Medical Systems.

Digital Mammography

Considered as the golden standard for diagnosing early-stage breast cancer, a digital mammogram is widely used to diagnose breast cancer. It is a non-invasive method of creating 2D and 3D images of the breasts to help doctors provide exceptional care for breast cancer with confidence. Our 3D biopsy system provides mammogram images with outstanding detail and superior diagnostic accuracy with small doses of radiation.

PET / CT Scan

A PET/CT scan is one of the best ways to find cancer and its stages. A PET CT scan utilizes radiation to show activity on a cellular level within the body. A small amount of radioactive material provides nuclear imaging to diagnose the severity of various kinds of diseases.

Yashoda Cancer centre has installed the latest generation PET/CT Scan machine to aid the diagnosis and treatment of a plethora of diseases such as gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders, heart disease, and other abnormalities within the body.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

Yashoda Cancer centre has installed the first of its kind a1.5 Tesla Volume MRI machine in India, which helps doctors to diagnose a problem and monitor it throughout the treatment. It is a non-invasive and painless procedure that does not involve x-ray radiation to create detailed images of the organs and tissues within the body. It is utilized to image almost all body parts, including the brain, spinal cord, breasts, heart, bones, joints, blood vessels, liver, prostate glands, etc.

Brachytherapy

Brachytherapy (brak-e-THER-uh-pee) is a type of a radiation therapy procedure that involves the placement of radioactive material inside the patient’s body to treat cancer. Also called internal radiation, this therapy helps the doctor to deliver higher doses of radiation to more-specific areas of the body to treat a variety of cancers. Generally, there are two types of Brachytherapy:

• Intracavity Brachytherapy- Radiation placed inside a body cavity using devices containing radioactive material
• Interstitial Brachytherapy- Radiation inserted into body tissue using devices containing radioactive material