April 02 2008 / by Accel Rose Category: Health & Medicine Year: 2008 Rating: 1
In the future patients with tumors and lesions will be able to
walk into a doctor’s office, sit down in a chair, have the anomaly
zapped non-invasively by an array of radiation beams that converge
at a single point inside their body, chat with the doctors the
whole way through, then get up, say thank you and drive themselves
home.
If that sounds amazing to you then you’ll be even more surprised
to discover that this hi-tech treatment already exists and has been
occurring for several months already.
Since its Fall 2007 release, a virtual surgery platform called
CyberKnife
that combines embedded tumor sensing, 3D imaging and concentrated
radiation bursts has been gaining considerable popularity. Surgeons
all over the globe have been reporting great success with the
device which makes it much easier to target certain areas of the
lungs and brain.
Check out this short MedWatch segment to see for yourself:
To get a sense of how the radiation beams work together, take a
look at this promotional video by the manufacturer:
(cont.)
This is yet another example of an amazing technology that I would
put a few years out in the future had I not been shown that it
already exists. Damn that accelerating change and info
overload!
I can only imagine how far this surgery will progress in the
coming years as computing costs drop, 3D imaging/sensing gets much
better, nanotech advances allow for better mapping and tagging of
tumors, and the radiation burst get easier to control.
