Cancer care at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center is reaching new heights through its evolving partnership with the Swedish medical tech company Elekta.
New Elekta technology is being implemented at the cancer center to reduce treatment times, increase the number of patients treated, and reduce the number of cancer treatments.
The hospital and medical tech leader have had a long-standing relationship. The entities signed an agreement in October 2024, further establishing their partnership, making Mary Bird Perkins a primary research partner and hospital to test out new and unreleased Elekta software and hardware.
“There are a lot of things that are going on with Elekta behind the walls of Mary Bird that our graduate students and faculty are working on,” Sotirios Stathakis, the cancer center’s chief of physics, tells Daily Report. “New applications, new workflows and new things that help navigate patients through radiation oncology in a software environment.”
Mary Bird Perkins was among the first 10 facilities in the U.S. to offer the Elekta Versa HD, which provides detailed 4D image-guided radiotherapy to precisely locate and treat small targets within the body. It was also the first facility in the U.S. to treat patients with the linear accelerator Elekta Harmony in November 2024.
The cancer center will soon be one of the first hospitals to use the Elekta One Planning software for radiation therapy, launching this summer. The software will enhance treatment planning, reduce stress on the linear accelerators and offer AI contouring for greater efficiency in segmenting the organs to deliver safe, effective and personalized radiation therapy.
