Press Release
SERVODRIVES PROVIDE ACCURACY REQUIRED FOR
TOTAL BODY IRRADIATION TREATMENT TABLE
A servo drive from Control Techniques has given a total body
irradiation (TBI) table a new lease of life at the Institute of
Oncology Ljubljana in Slovenia, bringing both the required
precision and reliability to an advanced life-saving radiotherapy
procedure.
The original system was designed and built in
1989 by the maintenance department of the Institute of Oncology
Ljubljana, and featured a DC servo drive for the control of the
table movements. However, advances in radiation treatment led
to the need for an upgrade to achieve better accuracy and improved
reliability.
The Institute chose Control Techniques’ local
representatives PS Logatec as their partner in this project and a
system was designed around Control Techniques’ new Digitax ST Plus
servo drive, providing both the accuracy of control needed and the
reliability without the need for an additional PLC.
Total body irradiation (TBI) is a special
radio therapeutic technique for the treatment of predominantly
hematological diseases such as leukemia’s and lymphomas. The
technique is mainly used for conditioning prior to bone marrow
transplantation in combination with intensive chemotherapy.
The main objective of TBI is to deliver a uniform dose 12 Gy within
±10% of the prescribed dose to a patient’s whole body and for the
reference point the accuracy of the delivered dose must be within
+- 3 %, whilst optimally sparing vital organs such as the
lungs. This is difficult to achieve because of the variations
in the thickness of the patient’s body and the density of the
tissue.
There are several methods of TBI, the system at the Institute of
Oncology Ljubljana, uses a table that moves along rails, known as
the ‘translation’ method. Good clinical results encouraged
them to invest in an upgrade to give them greater control and
reliability – the latter being most critical since the table must
not stop or deviate from the set speed cycle whilst the radiation
source is on.>>>>>>>>
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