1、What is a TOMO knife

TOMO knife radiotherapy technology integrates intensity-modulated radiotherapy, image-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy and dose-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy. tomo knife is the most advanced tumor radiotherapy equipment today. Its original design perfectly combines linear accelerator and spiral CT, breaking through many limitations of traditional accelerators. In particular, it has a "radical" effect on some complex, large-area and strange-shaped tumors. tomo knife irradiates tumors with 360-degree focused tomography under the guidance of CT, and provides efficient and accurate treatment for patients with malignant tumors. tomo knife opens a new chapter in tumor treatment.

TOMO knife radiotherapy is Tomotherapy or Helical Tomotherapy (HT), also known as spiral tomotherapy or Tomotherapy. TOMO knife radiotherapy is a new concept of radiotherapy technology which entered the clinic in 2003. This technique uses a specialized spiral tomographic radiotherapy machine, the Tomo Knife: a miniaturized 6 megavolt (MV) medical linear accelerator is mounted on the slip ring rack of spiral CT and uses the CT imaging principle in reverse to perform radiation therapy using high-energy X-rays.

2. Advantages of TOMO knife radiotherapy system

1. TOMO knife performs treatment on the linear accelerator according to the spiral CT tomography imaging principle. The linear accelerator is organically installed on the spiral CT slip ring frame. Through 360 degree rotation, continuous single-ring overlapping irradiation is performed on 51 radians by means of tomography or spiral scanning, and precise tomography irradiation is performed. In this way, any dose distribution requirements within the range of 40cm*160cm are realized, and cancers of various distributions and locations are irradiated within this range.

2, TOMO knife "level" (tomography) treatment, can achieve a high degree of precision, imaging accuracy of up to ±0.1mm, eliminate the connection between cold hot spot and irradiation field, it uses axial treatment, than ordinary radiotherapy, dose distribution is more reasonable, the surrounding normal tissue dose is lower.

3. TOMO Knife radiation therapy represents the highest level of conformal radiation that can be achieved, meaning that the dose is tightly wrapped around the tumor while keeping the critical organs around it less damaged. Compared to other methods, TOMO knife can be more effective and powerful to increase the target dose (tumor exposure).

3. Adaptive signs of TOMO knife radiotherapy

TOMO knife radiotherapy can be applied to any part of the body and even the most complex cases (e.g. multiple metastatic brain tumors; Head, neck, lung, liver and abdomen tumors; Gynecologic tumors in pelvic area, prostate; Multiple metastatic lesions throughout the body, whole brain, whole spinal cord and whole body bone marrow radiotherapy, etc.). Mev CT scan before treatment improves the accuracy of target location, so that the radiologist can increase the target dose while fully protecting the normal organ. Specifically, the following tumors are particularly suitable for TOMO knife radiotherapy:

Glioma, brain metastases, meningiomas and other benign and malignant intracranial tumors.

Nasopharyngeal cancer, maxillary sinus tumor, laryngeal cancer, tongue cancer and other head and neck malignant tumors.

Lung cancer, breast cancer, esophageal cancer, mediastinal tumor and other malignant tumors of the chest.

Liver cancer, gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, biliary system, kidney and other abdominal malignancies.

Prostate cancer, seminoma, cervical cancer, endometrial cancer, rectal cancer, bladder cancer and other pelvic malignancies.

Liposarcoma, osteosarcoma, basal cell carcinoma, skin squamous cell carcinoma, melanoma and other skin and soft tissue malignancies.

Leukemia, malignant lymphoma and other hematopoietic system diseases.

Metastatic lesions of bone, liver, lung, lymph nodes and other malignant tumors.

4. Brief procedure of Tomo knife radiotherapy:

1. Confirm the adaptation signs with the radiotherapy doctor

2, simulation positioning

3. The radiotherapy doctor sketched the target area according to the CT positioning data, and the physicist made the radiotherapy plan

4, the patient received TOMO knife radiotherapy, once every working day, each time 10-20 minutes, according to different circumstances of irradiation in 10 to 30 times

5. Follow-up after radiotherapy