Siemens Healthineers Debuts Two CT Systems Dedicated for Radiation Therapy Planning

At the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), Sept. 15-18 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Siemens Healthineers debuts two computed tomography (CT) systems dedicated to radiation therapy (RT) planning: the SOMATOM go.Sim and the SOMATOM go.Open Pro.¹

Designed to accommodate patient positioning accessories and increase patient comfort, the 64-slice SOMATOM go.Sim and the 128-slice SOMATOM go.Open Pro have an 85 cm bore. Both systems also feature optional Siemens Healthineers-manufactured patient marking lasers known as DirectLasers that are mounted directly onto the gantry and controlled via a mobile tablet. New GO with Green mobile workflow brings ease of use and walks the radiation therapist through each step of the patient setup process, enabling the therapist to remain at the patient’s side, potentially improving communication and comfort as well as reducing anxiety. These innovations help transform the world of RT simulation.

The SOMATOM go. Sim and SOMATOM go.Open Pro also feature DirectORGANS® for OAR (Organs at Risk) contouring. This software automatically addresses the dependency between image quality and the consistency of autocontouring results. DirectORGANS uses a specialized image reconstruction, optimizing the CT images for autocontouring and applying a deep learning-trained contouring algorithm. DirectORGANS may help reduce unwarranted variations with high-quality contours that approach the level of consensus-based contours.

Unique to the SOMATOM go.Open Pro CT system is the Direct Intelligent 4D (Direct i4D) technology, which adapts the image acquisition to a patient’s breathing in real time during the scan. Direct i4D is designed to help optimize image quality for each patient, reducing motion artifacts that are common to 4D image sets and often prompt rescans. In this manner, Direct i4D images can help customers treat more patients with techniques such as stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) that require a high degree of precision to avoid damaging healthy tissue.

“Siemens Healthineers is proud to unveil the SOMATOM go.Sim and SOMATOM go.Open Pro, which are the result of an intensive co-creation process involving over 300 radiotherapy experts,” said Hanno Dotzel, Vice President of Surgery and Oncology in the Advanced Therapies business at Siemens Healthineers North America. “These systems will help address the challenges inherent in CT radiation therapy planning and enable precision medicine in the fight against cancer.”