Investigations on medical aspects of CoRA — A new Cobalt Radiotherapy Arrangement (feasibility study)

Linear accelaerators (Linac) are the standard irradiation treatment units in clinical routine for both radiotherapy and radiosurgery. The available infrastructure in developing countries together with technical and economical arguments allow in most cases only the use of isotope units for radiotherapy. On the other side there is a natural interest in modern conformai treatment techniques in these countries. However, the technology of todays gamma teletherapy units and modern treatment methods are mutually exclusive in most cases. Isotope units can not be utilized in combination with multileaf collimators (MLC) due to their large source sizes and the mechanical conditions of these units do not allow stereotactic radiosurgery. Poffenbarger and Podgorsak [1] investigated the viability of an isocentric cobalt unit for stereotactic radiosurgery with respect to its use in developing countries. The Gamma-Knife [2] and the Rotating Gamma Unit [3] exclusively designed for radiosurgical treatments are only applicable for cranial lessons. So in developing countries the postulation for a multifunctional treatment unit is existent based also on financial limitations.