Nucletron and RaySearch cooperate to develop proton therapy planning software

28 November 2006

Veenendaal, The Netherlands and Stockholm, Sweden. Nucletron BV and RaySearch Laboratories AB have decided to join forces to develop leading-edge software for proton therapy planning. The companies have signed a long-term development and license agreement that will result in a new proton treatment planning and optimization module that will be fully integrated in Nucletron's Oncentra MasterPlan software.

Nucletron’s research and physics experience in protons dates back from Helax-TMS, one of the first commercially available treatment planning systems that supported proton planning. This longstanding proton experience combined with RaySearch’s extensive expertise in optimization routines and other advanced software, will lead to the introduction of a proven, unique and vendor independent MasterPlan proton solution.

“One of the challenges in modern radiotherapy departments is to decide on what is the best for the individual patient. MasterPlan is designed to make comparative planning simple and easy for daily clinical practice. It enables our customers to keep on improving patient care by choosing the best treatment. By offering proton planning, next to photon, electron and brachy planning in MasterPlan the treatment potential of each modality can be captured to the same level of refinement.” says Paul van den Biggelaar, Business Director Oncentra.

Distributed planning will play a major role in proton treatment delivery. The unparalleled software design of MasterPlan allows for multi-site collaborations. Reviewing and comparing treatment plans together with colleagues from another clinic can be just as easy as working with a colleague next door. This makes MasterPlan the ideal software package to solve all distribution problems. In many radiotherapy clinics around the globe, often hundreds of miles apart, many patients are being treated based on treatment plans generated with Oncentra MasterPlan. The new proton module to be developed by RaySearch will seamlessly fit into the distributed planning philosophy of MasterPlan.

”Nucletron is contributing the background knowledge within the physics of protons, which is extremely valuable. The demand for new treatment planning products for protons is increasing rapidly. Among other indications, this was confirmed at the PTCOG (Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group) proton conference in Houston, Texas, in the US in October this year in which RaySearch and Nucletron jointly participated and demonstrated a prototype. Several new clinics for proton therapy are being planned where RaySearch and Nucletron will participate in the tender process.” says Johan Löf, President and CEO of RaySearch.

Oncentra MasterPlan is a platform with software solutions, designed for easy and intuitive management of the information and data intensive radiotherapy processes required for multimodality planning and comparison.

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