Founded in the early 1990s, our department has pioneered advancements in radiation treatment planning and radiosurgery. In those early days, treatment planning was a meticulous process involving manual calculations and in-house software for dose computation. Radiosurgery necessitated the attachment of frames to patients' heads, followed by CT imaging and hand-drawing contours using wax pencils. Edited images were then uploaded to a Macintosh computer equipped with a light box and electrostatic digitizer. After an hour of set up, the limited dose rates available at the time meant treatment itself took at least an hour. Between all these constraints, the hospital could treat no more than three individual tumors in a day.
With the steady acquisition of increasingly advanced technology and systems in the ensuing years, we have seen progressive improvements in calculation speed, dose strength, and accuracy to realize ever more effective treatments. Today, the DROAS encompasses top-caliber faculty and staff who employ state-of-the-art technologies to treat over 1,000 patients annually. We offer a comprehensive array of world-class therapies, including stereotactic radiosurgery, extra-cranial radiation therapy, gated radiation therapy, real-time target monitoring, brachytherapy, and cutting-edge image-guided radiation therapies such as CT imaging, VisionRT applications, 4D simulation scanning, and adaptive radiation planning.
A History of Innovation
- 1973: 1st Betatron X-ray machine in New England
- 1997: 1st 3D treatment planning in New England
- 2003: 1st IMRT in New England
- 2004: world’s first demonstration of cardiac gating
- 2004: 1st to publish findings on VisiCoil in humans
- 2005: 1st in New England to offer daily prostate IGRT
- 2013: 1st Single-isocenter, multi-focal SRS
- 2014: 2nd in US & 4th in world to acquire TrueBeam
- 2017: 1st in northern New England w/Space OAR
- 2020: among 1st in US to offer MR-LINAC
- 2022: 1st in world to integrate Cherenkov w/SGRT