Radiation Oncology/Tomotherapy

  • Patients scanned across a modulated strip-beam
  • Only one “slice” (Greek prefix “tomo-”) of the target exposed at any one time by the linear accelerator (linac) beam
  • The three components distinctive to this modality:
    1. A collimator pair that defines the length of the strip
    2. A binary multileaf collimator whose leaves open and close during treatment to modulate the strip’s intensity
    3. A couch that scans the patient across the beam at a fixed speed the during treatment delivery