A Disruptive Treatment Control Software for Particle Therapy Centers
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death nowadays; 1 in every 2 men and 1 in every 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point of their lives. The number of cancer incidences is growing by 2.4% annually, which puts a financial burden on healthcare systems globally.
Particle therapy – PT (proton/neutron/positive ion therapy) has been proven to be effective and a safer alternative to other types of external beam radiotherapy as the charged particle dose is delivered in a narrow range and there is minimal damage to surrounding tissue. In 2015, among all patients that were treated for cancer worldwide, 25% were treated using some sort of radiation.
However, building PT centres is very costly (>100M €) which has been a crucial factor in the slow adoption of PT facilities. This is likely to change due to introduction to lower cost/compact systems, and, more importantly, growing clinical evidence regarding its efficacy. A critical part of a PT centre is its treatment control system (TCS), the software that synchronizes the operation of all the devices. Currently, PT centre equipment vendors each custom develop their own TCS, which works only with their own equipment, is of limited configurability, closed to adjustments and expensive.
Cosylab is a Slovenian company specializing in the field of control systems for particle accelerators with 17 years of experience in the field. We are developing our TCS (C-TCS) as an off-the-shelf product that is universal. Our solution is easily configurable and available without lead times. Overall, the C-TCS provides better cancer treatment efficacy, lower production and maintenance cost of PT facility, higher throughput of patients (resulting in more people treated).
C-TCS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 827366. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.