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Department Information 

Radiation Oncology Team
Department of Radiation Oncology Team

OUR MISSION:

To provide excellent clinical service representing state-of-the-art approaches; to perform clinical and basic cancer biology research; and to teach students at a variety of levels, particularly medical students, residents, and cancer biology graduate students.

What's happening in our department?

Radiation Oncology's current newsletter is now online.  Click on the link in the upper left corner of this page or download Adobe Acrobat Reader by clicking the icon below prior to opening the Radiation Oncology Department Newsletter.

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TomoTherapy®   Treatment System NEW   


In winter 2007, the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Arizona will become one of the few hospitals in the Southwest to offer the TomoTherapy HiArt® treatment system, a new way to deliver radiation treatment for cancer. TomoTherapy involves the safe delivery of high radiation doses to a very small, targeted area.



A truly integrated approach to radiation therapy
The system integrates imaging with radiation treatment, allowing physicians to verify the position of the tumor immediately before each treatment session.  This way,adjustments can be made on the spot to make sure that radiation is delivered exactly where it should be. This is important because tumors can move and change shape and size quickly.

Traditional radiation therapies project radiation on a tumor from a few directions. With TomoTherapy the Radiation Therapy Team can deliver precise and powerful doses of radiation therapy from 360-degrees.

Even if patients have reached their maximum tolerance dose of traditional radiation, or if their tumor is in a hard-to-reach area, TomoTherapy may open new doors to advanced radiation therapy treatments.

The equipment used for TomoTherapy looks much like a computed tomography (CT) system: the patient lies on a couch that moves continuously through a rotating ring gantry. The gantry houses a linear accelerator, which delivers radiation in the shape of a fan beam as the ring is turning. With the couch moving at the same time the gantry is rotating, the radiation beam makes a spiral (or helical) pattern around the patient, targeting tumors with optimal levels of radiation while minimizing the dose to healthy areas.
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More improvements are taking place every day in our department!