Notice
Road and parking lot construction in Madison, Wis. may result in travel delays and route changes to UW Health clinic and hospital locations. Please plan accordingly.Read more
Road and parking lot construction in Madison, Wis. may result in travel delays and route changes to UW Health clinic and hospital locations. Please plan accordingly.Read more
Overview
Each patient is unique. If you need radiation therapy we will review and discuss with you the treatment method that will work best for you. One option is MRI-guided radiation therapy.
MRI-guided radiation therapy provides real-time MRI images of your tumor. For some patients, tumors located in the chest or abdomen can sometimes move as you breathe making it difficult to be sure that only the tumor is being targeted. This process allows us to see your tumor so the radiation dose is not given until the tumor is located where it should be.
UW Health was only the second health system in the world to provide this unique treatment. We use the ViewRay system by MRIdian.
About
Our MRI-guided radiation therapy lets your care team see what’s happening inside your body during treatment.
Your clinical team programs the radiation beam to only treat the tumor while it’s in the intended location. Our ability to constantly adjust the radiation beam reduces the amount of healthy tissue affected by radiation. The chance to tightly focus the radiation on the tumor lets us better balance increasing dosage to the tumor with protecting healthy tissues.
MRI-guided radiation can provide better treatment for complex tumors that move substantially when you breathe or as you digest food.
Treatment process
Lots of planning takes place before your first MRI-guided radiation treatment.
Your care team creates your radiation treatment plan by taking pretreatment and planning images. Those images are aligned with the radiation delivery beam.
During treatment, the system:
Monitors your anatomy in real-time
Stops the radiation beam if the tumor moves outside the target area
Restarts the radiation when it moves back into the target area
The continuous MRI scans let your care team adjust your radiation therapy dosage and target area over time. You get radiation therapy that zeroes in on your tumor.
Meet our team
The radiation team at UW Health includes experts in imaging, medical physics and radiation oncology.
Locations
We offer state-of-the-art radiation therapy at University Hospital in Madison, Wis.