Tomotherapy is basically Intensity Modulate Radiation Therapy (IMRT) using a limited type of delivery machine, which is similar to a modified CT scan machine, rather than the more versatile linear accelerator used at ARC and more than 95% of radiation centers worldwide. It is unclear what advantages, if any, tomotherapy treatments may have over conventional IMRT. However, what is clear is that with the introduction of RapidArc Rotational Volumetric Radiation Therapy, which can now deliver a rotational arc IMRT treatment using a linear accelerator, Tomotherapy treatments no longer have any type of advantage, and in fact, may have some comparable disadvantages. Those disadvantages include: much less long-term treatment history compared to linear accelerators, the need to spirally treat an organ, which may end up overdosing certain structures of the body with too much radiation than is necessary, and much longer treatment times each day (up to 40 minutes per day with Tomotherapy as compared to about 90 seconds with RapidArc). ARC is proud to have been the first Radiation Oncology practice on the East Coast of North America to use RapidArc technology by Varian Medical Systems - the worldwide leader in radiation therapy technologies.
