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The standard radiotherapy machine: an electron accelerator in a rotating arm that makes high-energy X-rays or electron beams, shapes them with moving metal leaves, and takes a CT of the patient before each dose. Most people who have radiotherapy are treated on one.
A medical linac fires electrons down a copper waveguide driven by microwaves until they reach several million electronvolts, bends them through a magnet and either slams them into a tungsten target to make photons or scatters them directly as an electron beam. The head carries a multileaf collimator whose tungsten leaves shape the field and modulate its intensity, and the whole assembly rotates on a C-shaped gantry around a couch that moves in six degrees of freedom. A kilovoltage imager on a side arm takes radiographs and cone-beam CT for image guidance, and surface cameras or breath-hold systems handle motion. The first clinical linac treated a patient in London in 1953; today Varian's TrueBeam and Edge and Elekta's Versa HD, Infinity and Harmony are the dominant models, with Chinese and Indian makers offering lower-cost units.
The C-arm is versatile: photons at several energies, electrons for skin and superficial targets, non-coplanar beams for brain radiosurgery, and every technique from palliative fields to VMAT and SBRT. Its limits are cost, a shielded bunker, a workforce of physicists and therapists, and mechanical tolerances that require daily quality assurance. Ring-gantry, helical and robotic designs trade some of that flexibility for speed, integrated imaging or steeper dose fall-off.
Microwave-driven acceleration of electrons produces megavoltage X-rays or electron beams; a rotating gantry, multileaf collimator and on-board kilovoltage imaging shape and aim the dose to the target seen on the day.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"C-arm medical linear accelerators" OR ABSTRACT:"C-arm medical linear accelerators" OR TITLE:"TrueBeam, Versa HD and others" OR ABSTRACT:"TrueBeam, Versa HD and others") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about C-arm medical linear accelerators (TrueBeam, Versa HD and others), not a curated reading list.
Shares Radiotherapy access and the global machine gap, Elekta, Varian (Siemens Healthineers), Oesophageal cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Cobalt-60 teletherapy, ZAP-X gyroscopic radiosurgery, CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery, Elekta and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Ring-gantry linacs (Halcyon, Ethos), SBRT / SABR (stereotactic radiotherapy), IMRT / IGRT (modern external beam), Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Varian (Siemens Healthineers), Breast cancer (all types), Prostate cancer, Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Glioma & glioblastoma, Breast cancer (all types), Prostate cancer, Colorectal cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Prostate cancer, Colorectal cancer, Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Prostate cancer and the tag machines-wave.
Shares SBRT / SABR (stereotactic radiotherapy), Colorectal cancer, Non-small-cell lung cancer and the tag machines-wave.