Northern Ireland Cancer Centre selects Oncentra™ MasterPlan as cornerstone for future treatment planning requirements

October 7 2005  

Veenendaal, The Netherlands,- The Northern Ireland Cancer Centre has purchased Nucletron’s Oncentra MasterPlan to address the treatment planning expansion needs of their clinical facilities. A significantly larger, purpose designed, 10-bunker Cancer facility will open in March 2006, and will use 13 Oncentra MasterPlan treatment planning workstations to meet the increased treatment planning requirements.


"We are very pleased to be part of the new cancer treatment facility for the people of Northern Ireland” states Mark Adam, General Manager of Nucletron. “Oncentra MasterPlan will enable clinicians to provide extremely advanced treatments for many types of cancer. The Optimizer system within MasterPlan will provide planning capabilities for IMRT (intensity modulated radiation therapy).” 


According to Dr. Vivian Cosgrove, from the Northern Ireland Medical Physics Agency at Belvoir Park Hospital in Belfast, “Oncentra MasterPlan will meet the current needs of the facility and also has a number of unique capabilities that will allow the facility to expand treatment capabilities into the future. In particular, the distributed license capability and the proven connectivity will allow the new facility to make maximum use of the investment in Oncentra MasterPlan.”


Oncentra MasterPlan will operate with Varian linear accelerators and GE MR and PET/CT scanners at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre. Key features of MasterPlan, such as image registration, image fusion and multi-modality imaging will play a key role in uniting information between the diagnostic and treatment equipment. Features such as mutual information image fusion, extra-planar image reconstruction and manipulation, and fusion verification software capabilities should reduce the time physicians need for contouring target and organs-at-risk volumes. Inherent in MasterPlan is a sophisticated, DICOM RT compliant archive that will make the treatment-planning workflow more efficient and improve plan-data traceability and transfer, within the Cancer Centre and beyond.


The IMRT capability is an important complement to the new facility. “The IMRT Optimizer visualization system will allow treatment planning staff to view calculations on the fly. It is a very useful addition to the Oncentra system,” states Dr. Cosgrove. “Optimizer will provide us with a great deal of flexibility to quickly develop complex IMRT treatments. By separating the Optimizer and Segmentation calculations, steps to simplify an IMRT delivery can be fully explored and validated.”


Oncentra Optimizer is developed in partnership with RaySearch Laboratories from Stockholm, Sweden. Oncentra MasterPlan is sold and supported throughout the world by Nucletron.



About the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre

The population of Northern Ireland is approximately 1.7 million. In 1996, the chief medical officer called for the implementation of a multidisciplinary approach to cancer diagnosis, treatment, and palliative care. In response, Northern Ireland began development of one Cancer Centre, which is based at Belfast City Hospital, and one Cancer Unit in each of the four regional health boards in Altnagelvin, Antrim, Ulster, and Craigavon.


The new Cancer facility will open in March 2006 and provide the inhabitants of Northern Ireland with the latest advances in cancer therapy.



About RaySearch Laboratories

RaySearch develops and licenses software for radiation therapy of cancer. The company’s products are specially designed to optimize radiation therapy. RaySearch is based in Stockholm, Sweden. For more information on RaySearch, please visit http://www.raysearchlabs.com/.



About Nucletron B.V.

Nucletron is a global leader in the development, manufacture, sales, service and support of the world’s most innovative products for cancer treatment, with particular expertise in treatment planning systems, brachytherapy, simulation, integrated software solutions for oncology, and comprehensive support and professional education and services. The company has over 20 offices worldwide, including its corporate headquarters in Veenendaal, the Netherlands. For more information on Nucletron, please visit: http://www.nucletron.com/.


Nucletron B.V. is a subsidiary of Delft Instruments. Delft Instruments is the holding company of an international group of companies, which hold a leading position in their respective markets with high quality, high technology products and services. Delft Instruments is active through wholly owned subsidiaries in more than 30 countries worldwide, employs approximately 1,000 people and reported turnover of EUR 261.6 million in 2004. For more information on Delft Instruments, please visit: http://www.delftinstruments.com/. 



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