At the UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands, we have constructed a prototype MRI accelerator. The prototype is a modified 6 MV Elekta (Crawley, UK) accelerator next to a modified 1.5 T Philips Achieva (Best, The Netherlands) MRI system. From the initial design onwards, modifications to both systems were aimed to yield simultaneous and unhampered operation of the MRI and the accelerator. Indeed, the simultaneous operation is shown by performing diagnostic quality 1.5 T MRI with the radiation beam on. No degradation of the performance of either system was found. The integrated 1.5 T MRI system and radiotherapy accelerator allow simultaneous irradiation and MR imaging. The full diagnostic imaging capacities of the MRI can be used; dedicated sequences for MRI-guided radiotherapy treatments will be developed. This proof of concept opens the door towards a clinical prototype to start testing MRI-guided radiation therapy (MRIgRT) in the clinic.

LETTER • OPEN ACCESSFirst patients treated with a 1.5 T MRI-Linac: clinical proof of concept of a high-precision, highfield MRI guided radiotherapy treatment AbstractThe integration of 1.5 T MRI functionality with a radiotherapy linear accelerator (linac) has been pursued since 1999 by the UMC Utrecht in close collaboration with Elekta and Philips. The idea behind this integrated device is to offer unrivalled, online and real-time, soft-tissue visualization of the tumour and the surroundings for more precise radiation delivery. The proof of concept of this device was given in 2009 by demonstrating simultaneous irradiation and MR imaging on phantoms, since then the device has been further developed and commercialized by Elekta. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the clinical feasibility of online, high-precision, high-field MRI guidance of radiotherapy using the first clinical prototype MRI-Linac.Four patients with lumbar spine bone metastases were treated with a 3 or 5 beam step-and-shoot IMRT plan. The IMRT plan was created while Letter Institute of Physics and Engineering in MedicineOriginal content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. 3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. the patient was on the treatment table and based on the online 1.5 T MR images; pre-treatment CT was deformably registered to the online MRI to obtain Hounsfield values. Bone metastases were chosen as the first site as these tumors can be clearly visualized on MRI and the surrounding spine bone can be detected on the integrated portal imager. This way the portal images served as an independent verification of the MRI based guidance to quantify the geometric precision of radiation delivery. Dosimetric accuracy was assessed post-treatment from phantom measurements with an ionization chamber and film. Absolute doses were found to be highly accurate, with deviations ranging from 0.0% to 1.7% in the isocenter. The geometrical, MRI based targeting as confirmed using portal images was better than 0.5 mm, ranging from 0.2 mm to 0.4 mm.In conclusion, high precision, high-field, 1.5 T MRI guided radiotherapy is clinically feasible.

The UMC Utrecht is constructing a 1.5 T MRI scanner integrated with a linear accelerator (Lagendijk et al 2008 Radiother. Oncol. 86 25-9). The goal of this device is to facilitate soft-tissue contrast based image-guided radiotherapy, in order to escalate the dose to the tumour while sparing surrounding normal tissues. Dosimetry for the MRI accelerator has to be performed in the presence of a magnetic field. This paper investigates the feasibility of using a Farmer NE2571 ionization chamber for absolute dosimetry. The impact of the mcagnetic field on the response of this ionization chamber has been measured and simulated using GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations. Two orientations of the ionization chamber with respect to the incident beam and the magnetic field which are feasible in the MRI accelerator configuration are taken into account. Measurements are performed using a laboratory magnet ranging from 0 to 1.2 T. In the simulations a range from 0 to 2 T is used. For both orientations, the measurements and simulations agreed within the uncertainty of the measurements and simulations. In conclusion, the response of the ionization chamber as a function of the magnetic field is understood and can be simulated using GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations.