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by Paige Taylor
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — A new piece of technology now sits inside of the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center, and it will soon be used to help treat cancer patients.
The new technology is an artificial intelligence-powered, adaptive radiation therapy.
"This is the Varian Ethos Adaptive Radiation Therapy System," OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center radiation oncologist Dr. Tyler Gunter said.
The $3 million machine provides a new opportunity when it comes to radiation therapy for cancer patients, and it is the first one in Oklahoma.
"It's actually really exciting compared to our standard radiation therapy machines, or linear accelerators, which rely on a radiation plan that's generated from a CT scan that's typically obtained about a week before beginning radiation therapy and using that plan throughout treatment. The Ethos System allows us to, on the fly, adapt that radiation plan to the daily configuration," Dr. Gunter said.
Dr. Gunter explained how AI is used in the technology.
"It's allowing us to identify these changes that we're talking about in anatomy and tumor configuration and account for them. So while it's not making any clinical decisions in treatment management, it is assisting us in making those decisions more efficiently and carrying those forward and allowing us to make these big changes in treatment plans much more rapidly than we were previously able to," he said.
Dr. Gunter and his team gave an inside look to how the technology works in real time.
"Now the AI is going to be working on adjusting our targets and normal tissues, what we've identified to the computer in the treatment planning process, as targets and areas that we want the radiation to avoid as much as possible. And it's adjusting those to today's anatomy," Dr. Gunter said.
The new technology could potentially increase how many patients they are able to serve, according to Dr. Gunter.
"It can also allow us to compress treatments into a shorter period of time. So what may have taken five weeks to treat now may take five days. So we can improve precision to deliver higher doses of radiation in a given treatment for a shorter treatment course with the same efficacy and the same side effect profile," he said.
OU Health plans to start using this new technology next week.
"We have a few patients slated to begin the treatment, some excellent cases that will certainly benefit from adaptive radiation therapy," Dr. Gunter said.
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