DoseOptics is revolutionizing safe cancer care, and here’s how.
More than 14 million cancer patients receive radiation therapy each year. While significant advancements continue to be made in radiotherapy, errors may still occur during the treatment process. Though serious radiotherapy errors are rare, and we know radiation has saved countless lives, a misstep during treatment can have devastating results. But DoseOptics is changing that–and thus altering the landscape of cancer radiotherapy care. With BeamSite, our advanced camera system that captures video-rate imaging of radiation delivery, we have made it possible for radiotherapy to be delivered smarter and safer, improving treatments. The delivery can actually be “seen” by the therapy team for the very first time, for every treatment and every patient, with millimeter accuracy.
The backstory: conceptual developments leading to BeamSite started back in 2010 when Dr. Brian Pogue, now Chair of Medical Physics at Wisconsin, with the support of Dartmouth Cancer Center, brought together a team including radiation oncology, medical physics, veterinary medicine, and biomedical engineering at Dartmouth. Hoping to make radiation safer, this growing team worked to create a system that would visualize radiation during treatment sessions. Within a few years, key refinements and pre-clinical and clinical testing were completed at the Cancer Center, and human studies were underway by 2014; this early work was funded scientifically by the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) as an R01. By 2015, DoseOptics was founded, and this system development was specifically chosen to advance by the National Cancer Institute through support of several Small Business Investment in Research (SBIR) grants. That system was adapted for clinical use under the name BeamSite and cleared by the FDA in 2020.
The BeamSite camera is truly the first of its kind. It leverages advanced light detection principles to visualize the Cherenkov effect, which is when high energy x-rays irradiate tissue to spin off electrons and emit a very faint visible glow–the same glow that causes underwater nuclear reactors to look blue. Because it has such a sensitive detection at the single photon level, and is tightly time-synchronized to the linear accelerator, BeamSite has the ability to create a real-time visualization of those faint glowing emissions. What is the result? A detailed record of radiation delivery, from start to finish, where the image shows where the radiation intersects with the patient’s tissue.
The reason this visualization is so impactful is because radiation oncologists and other therapy team members will no longer have to “operate in the dark.” Radiation therapy is often referred to as a “blind” procedure, because up until BeamSite, it was impossible to see the beam. Although patients are always aligned and imaged before their External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT), once treatment delivery begins, the actual beam is invisible without BeamSite. To be clear, EBRT is a highly precise treatment that is planned, checked, and checked again before any radiation is delivered. But, the margin for error still exists–and any error beyond a few millimeters can be very serious. With BeamSite, a patient’s clinical team can monitor each fraction of radiation delivery as it is happening, with a simple and intuitive video display of the radiation beam on the patient.
There are a few implications this close monitoring of radiotherapy has on the future of cancer care. First of all, it means patients are safer. Treatment errors, including but not limited to, unexpected field shape, movement, misalignment in difficult-to-set-up situations, immobilization inconsistencies, or a misdirected beam, can be caught and rectified immediately. BeamSite also improves patient-provider communication, because patients can review recordings of their treatments with their radiation oncologist and gain clarity about the details of their treatment. Along those same lines, BeamSite’s recordings can be shared within the clinic to analyze and improve radiation processes. Medical physicists and other researchers in the field can also reap the benefits with this device. In a nutshell, more data surrounding the radiotherapy delivery process is everything. In cases where alterations in treatment are warranted, the team needs to be able to investigate and interpret what happened. The more the clinical team knows, the better they can care for their patients.
Most recently, the partnership between DoseOptics and VisionRT has led to the development of a combined approach for BeamSite to work with AlignRT, VisionRT’s surface-guided radiation therapy system. This version of the BeamSite system, called DoseRT, enables the therapy team to observe the 3D surface of the patient, gathering positional information, and combines this with a real-time display of the beam delivery. This integrated system offers perhaps the most comprehensive view of the patient's and the radiation delivery process.
Last but certainly not least, BeamSite can provide peace of mind for cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. While radiotherapy offers amazing cures, it still poses infinite challenges for each patient undergoing it. The series of emotional, physical, and financial hurdles radiotherapy presents to each individual can cause extreme stress during an already extreme season of life. At DoseOptics, a big part of our mission is to reduce this stress for cancer patients–not only because reduced stress can optimize their treatment, but also because they deserve to feel confident while they are receiving their radiation treatment. We already know that our visualization systems make treatments safer. With every BeamSite system placed in a clinic, we strive to give patients confidence and peace of mind in their treatment delivery, too.
