Elekta acquires ultrasound-guided radiation therapy technology from Resonant Medical Inc

2 June 2010

Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Elekta has acquired Canadian company Resonant Medical Inc. (RMI), specialists in image-guided radiation therapy for cancer treatment.

RMI develops systems for image-guided radiation therapy of soft tissues using 3-D ultrasound technology. RMI’s integrated software solutions have been developed in co-operation with leading academic institutions to improve treatment accuracy for cancer in the prostate, breast, liver, cervix, uterus, bladder as well as head and neck.

Elekta’s President and CEO Tomas Puusepp said “This is really exciting, as it further enhances Elekta’s state-of-the-art solutions in IGRT, by adding RMI’s leadership in soft tissue visualization and tracking, especially focused on innovative solutions for breast and prostate cancer. In addition, given Elekta’s dedication to open architecture, the technology will be made available to customers with other vendors’ equipment, making it possible to improve IGRT processes everywhere.”

Elekta says that RMI’s current products will continue to operate with linear accelerators from all manufacturers and provide outstanding image guidance for soft tissue targets, especially in the breast and pelvic area, without additional X-ray dose or using invasive implanted markers. They can add high quality IGRT to the thousands of linacs in use today that do not have integrated imaging systems, while the soft tissue detail is also highly complementary to linacs already equipped with cone beam CT or MV (portal) imaging.

In addition, RMI will provide additions to Elekta’s MOSAIQ treatment planning solutions by displaying soft tissue structures, not easily seen on X-ray computed tomography but in exact spatial correlation with these CT images, and offering a suite of automatic segmentation and contouring tools.

“Elekta has gained an experienced development team with mature, easy-to-use, stable clinical products. And the established sales and marketing infrastructure of Elekta is the perfect foundation to further introduce this valuable technology to the radiation oncology market. Beyond just today however, the really exciting things are yet ahead as we start to integrate RMI:s solutions with MOSAIQ and in the future with our state-of-the art linear accelerators”, said Elekta’s President and CEO Tomas Puusepp.

RMI was founded in 2000 based on research from McGill University, Montreal. The CEO of the company, Tony Falco, Ph.D. is one of the founders and has over 15 years experience in advanced imaging technology; clinical, product development, supply, and IP creation. The company has 35 employees, of whom most are based in Montreal, Canada.

Tony Falco, CEO of RMI, said: “These are exciting times. RMI provides solutions compatible with all vendors’ simulators and linear accelerators and together with Elekta’s world-wide customer network it provides us for the first time with the ability to improve clinical standards on a global basis. In addition, being fully integrated with a leading clinical solutions provider like Elekta makes it possible for us to deliver truly unique integrated clinical solutions in the future, all of which is important in improving patient care.”