Brainlab announced today that it received FDA clearance for two new software applications that help to plan radiosurgery treatments for the spine and brain.

"Not only were we able to provide hope to many patients [who] usually would have been treated with whole brain radiation, the highly automated and optimized planning software allows patients to be treated more consistently, create plans in less than 30 minutes, and with highly conformal results," Mark Bruseski, VP of sales for radiotherapy in North America at Brainlab, told HCB News.

After the positive reception of its Elements Multiple Brain Mets SRS software, Brainlab felt that introducing Elements Cranial SRS and Spine SRS was the next natural step.
"Elements Spine SRS and Cranial SRS add two further indications to our portfolio, expanding our radiosurgery focus to encompass primary tumors," said Bruseski. "We believe that each of these indications have specific challenges and with our dedicated planning Elements we can better address these clinical requirements and offer highly automated solutions."

Brain Elements Cranial SRS can generate radiosurgery plans in under 15 minutes. It supports plans for a variety of cranial indications including arteriovenous malformations, pituitary adenoma, vestibular schwannoma, glioma, meningioma and large brain metastases.

Oncologists have historically used radiosurgery with caution when treating spine tumors because of the risk of damaging the spinal cord. Elements Spine SRS addresses that by accounting for variations in the curvature of the spine and ensuring high doses of radiation are delivered directly to the tumor and not the spinal cord.

Both software applications scored CE mark in May and were successfully introduced into clinical environments in those regions. The first patients were treated with Spine SRS at Instituto Privado de Radioterapia Oncologica S.A. in Argentina, and with Cranial SRS and Spine SRS at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany.

The Brainlab Elements suite will be available for hands-on demonstrations at this year's American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting in San Diego this weekend.

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