1,000th Patient Treated with MRIdian at Seoul National University Hospital

Radiation therapy equipment manufacturer, ViewRay, Inc., has announced that its MRIdian System has successfully treated one thousand patients at Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH), a leading healthcare facility in South Korea.

In September 2015, SNUH became the first MRIdian installation in Asia, and since that time, their clinical team has amassed extensive expertise in MRI-guided radiation therapy, which they have shared through nearly 25 peer-reviewed publications and various presentations at medical meetings.

The SNUH clinical team’s MRIdian experience spans numerous treatment indications including lung, liver, breast, and prostate, among others, with particular emphasis on the important role of adaptive therapy in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. SNUH is a true pioneer in MR-guided radiation therapy, having even developed and patented a visual guidance patient-controlled (VGPC) respiratory gating system. SNUH uses this design to enable its patients to control their treatments, reducing treatment times by as much as 30 percent. Their study demonstrated an average stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) treatment time of 22 minutes when implementing the VGPC system (1.).

“As Asia’s first MRI-guided therapy center and one of the first in the world to use the MRIdian system, we’ve been at the forefront of this important advancement in cancer care and have spent the past five years exploring the benefits of stereotactic MRI-guided adaptive radiation therapy across a variety of indications,” said Dr. Kyung Hwan Shin, M.D., Ph.D., Department Chairman, Radiation Oncology, SNUH. “Having now treated more than 1,000 patients we’ve seen how real-time soft-tissue visibility and on-table adaptive treatment capabilities can impact patient outcomes and have dedicated much time to sharing our clinical and technical findings with the world through protocols, presentations, and publications.”

For the past 130 years, SNUH has been leading the advancement of medicine, as the central national hospital that represents South Korea. SNUH holds 1,751 beds, providing medical care for 9,000 outpatients a day with 8,000 employees including 1,800 doctors. They offer state-of-the-art medical systems, world-class R&D capabilities, and doctors skilled in the treatment of cancer.

Currently, 40 MRIdian systems are installed at hospitals around the world where they are used to treat a wide variety of solid tumors and are the focus of numerous ongoing research efforts. MRIdian has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, scientific meeting abstracts, and presentations. More than 11,000 patients have been treated with MRIdian. For a list of treatment centers, please visit: https://viewray.com/find-mridianmri-guided-radiation-therapy.

1. Development of patient–controlled respiratory gating system based on visual guidance for magnetic–resonance image–guided radiation therapy. Jung–in Kim Hanyoung Lee Hong–Gyun Wu Eui Kyu Chie Hyun–Cheol Kang Jong Min Park; Med Phys Volume 44, Issue 9, September 2017