Radiation Therapy Machine Revolutionizes Fight Against Cancer
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
Founders of 2016 ASTech Awards Finalist for Applied Technology & Innovation MagnetTx Oncology Solutions have done what every innovator dreams of doing: they’ve made the impossible possible. Under the leadership of MagnetTx’s CEO, and University of Alberta professor, Dr. Gino Fallone, the Linac-MR Research Group at the Cross Cancer Institute and the University of Alberta has become the first group in the world to successfully combine a Linear Accelerators (Linac) and an Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) into a radiation therapy machine called the Aurora-RT™.
“Until we created the Aurora-RT™, it was believed that the functions of these machines could not be merged,” says Fallone. “Even today, a Linac and a MRI have to be about ten metres from each other, because the operation of one machine interferes with the operation of the other.”
MagnetTx technology revolutionized how tumours are treated by combining these two machines into one. The Aurora-RT™ was specifically designed to treat cancer that is susceptible to radiation treatment and MagnetTx Oncology intends to make this technology available worldwide.
Read the full story here.
Transcript
Congratulations 2016 ASTech Awards Finalist MagnetTx Oncology Solutions. Find out more about their innovative work with CT and MRI imaging from this short video profile with CEO, Dr. Gino Fallone.
ASTech Foundation
The Alberta Science and Technology Leadership (ASTech) Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded through an industry initiative in 1989 to showcase the substantial achievements in science & technology in Alberta and to promote the importance of these activities to social and economic benefit.
