AAPM Task Group Publishes SGRT Guidelines

A task group for The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has issued a report detailing technical guidelines for the clinical implementation and use of Surface Guided Radiation Therapy (SGRT).

The report says: “The clinical use of surface imaging has increased dramatically with demonstrated utility for initial patient positioning, real-time motion monitoring, and beam gating in a variety of anatomical sites.”

SGRT, a technology pioneered by Vision RT, uses 3D cameras and computer vision to monitor a patient’s skin surface in real-time and compare it to the ideal position with sub-millimetric accuracy. Task Group 302 consisted of prominent experts from throughout the radiation therapy community and was first formed in 2017.

“The release of the report is a testament to the success of Vision RT’s AlignRT technology and is an important milestone in establishing SGRT as the standard of care in advanced radiation therapy,” says Ben Waghorn, VP Product Management & Clinical Operations for Vision RT and a non-voting member of the task group. “Importantly, it also demonstrates the ongoing innovation in this space, which Vision RT is continuing to drive to further enhance patient safety and care.”

There are more than 100 peer-reviewed publications reporting studies that involve the use of Vision RT’s technology for SGRT. These span a wide range of indications from brain to breast to sarcoma. Vision RT technology uses rigid registration, and as TG302 states, “The QA recommendations discussed throughout this report are straightforward to implement and interpret for rigid registration algorithms.” Quickly growing in use around the world, AlignRT has been shown to help deliver optimal patient positioning, maximize efficiency and enhance patient comfort across many different treatment sites.

The report, which reviewed SGRT use, commissioning and quality assurance states that implementing SGRT has the opportunity to enhance clinical standards by detecting “incorrect patient” errors, isocenter localization errors, “incorrect immobilization” errors, intra-fractional motion, and changes in patient anatomy such as skin breakdown or breast swelling. Also included was guidance on commissioning and quality assurance.

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Vision RT is the inventor of Surface Guided Radiation Therapy (SGRT), contact-free technology that uses 3D cameras and computer vision to help ensure radiation therapy is delivered safely to cancer patients. There are more than 1,900 systems installed worldwide.