How The TrueBeam™ STx System Works

Patient talks to tech while proparing for treatment The new TrueBeam STx System from Varian Medical in the Mills-Peninsula Dorothy E. Schneider Cancer Center is an advanced radiosurgery solution for treating cancer. With its power and flexibility, clinicians can now develop treatments that are best suited for patients' individual circumstances.

How does it work?

TrueBeam STx combines imaging, sophisticated and powerful beam delivery and advanced motion management to perform radiosurgery with great precision and speed.

Here are some quick facts:

TrueBeam STx rotates around the patient to deliver a prescribed radiation dose from nearly any angle.
Precision is measured in increments of less than a millimeter.
A high-definition multileaf collimator (or MLC) is what shapes the beam. It has 120 computer-controlled "leaves" or "fingers" that create apertures of different shapes and sizes. The leaves sculpt the beam to match the 3-D shape of the tumor. These can move and change during treatment to target the tumor and minimize dose to the surrounding healthy tissue.
TrueBeam STx's additional functionality provides for the acquisition of a cone-beam CT, a form of CT, using 25 percent less X-ray dose than compared with earlier Varian image-guided technologies. This means patients are exposed to less X-rays/radiation.
Real-time imaging tools allow clinicians to "see" the tumor they are about to treat. This allows them to target tumors with accuracy measured in millimeters.
The system includes a new "gated" option for synchronizing beam delivery with breathing. This helps maintain accuracy as the system changes its targeting whenever tumor motion is an issue, for example during lung cancer treatments.
A patented High-Intensity Mode can deliver dose rates that are twice as fast as the current technologies, reducing treatment time on the table.