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Computerworld - Back in the late 1980s, researchers at Varian Medical Systems Inc. had a vision for how to make radiation therapy for treating cancer more powerful, more efficient and much safer.

They just didnt have the technology they needed to get there.

We didnt have the software that could do it, but the power of the computer was becoming sufficient that it could happen, says Dick Levy, chairman of Varians board and former CEO of the company.

Varian leveraged the rapid pace of computing advancements of the 1990s to develop a more precise and effective way of delivering radiation therapy. The result is its product, SmartBeam Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), a combination of hardware and software that pushed radiation therapy into a whole new realm of capabilities.

The old radiation treatment compared to the new is like comparing a flashlight to a laser beam, Levy says.

SmartBeam IMRT enables oncology teams to precisely target cancer tumors while better protecting the surrounding healthy tissue, improving both quality of life for patients and clinical outcomes. SmartBeam IMRT earned Varian the top spot in the manufacturing category of the 2007 Computerworld Honors Program.

IMRT was a revolution in the whole field, and Varian was instrumental in making this a reality for the user, says Arno J. Mundt, professor and chairman of the radiation oncology department at Moores Cancer Center, a part of the University of California, San Diego, Medical Center.

Pinpointing a Tumor

Levys flashlight/laser beam analogy isnt an exaggeration. Radiation therapy has been around since the 1940s, and it has without question saved countless lives, but earlier versions had limits. Conventional delivery methods cant configure the radiation beams to tumors, a design flaw that often results in damage to surrounding healthy tissue and organs. Nor can it adjust the dose delivered by each beamlet to target areas requiring more radiation.

The whole point is to put as much dose on the tumor and the least amount on the healthy tissue that surrounds it. The biggest problem is making it conform to the tumor, says Varian CEO Tim Guertin, who was president of the companys oncology systems business when SmartBeam IMRT was made ready for the commercial market.

Traditional linear accelerators deliver radiation beams that create a rectangular shape. Therapists used lead blocks in an effort to shape the beams so the radiation would conform to a tumors shape, explains Stan Mans­field, Varians manager of emerging technologies and IT. It was a cumbersome process.