Penn State Health – Saint Joseph Medical Center
LINAC
This Cancer Center expansion includes a 2,400 sq. ft. addition to accommodate a new, state-of-the-art TrueBeam linear accelerator. This sophisticated technology will offer cancer patients faster, more targeted radiation treatment that is more patient friendly, more precise, and causes fewer side effects.
St. Joseph Cancer Center provides world class cancer treatment, including genetic education, counseling and testing for people at high cancer risk, minimally invasive internal radiation therapy for liver tumors, and cutting-edge clinical trials research for new cancer treatments.
The hallmark of the TrueBeam linear accelerator technology is a powerful combination of 2-D, 3-D and 4-D imaging that is updated every 10 milliseconds, monitors a patient’s breathing and body movement, and permits faster, more potent radiation doses directly to a tumor site without damage to surrounding tissue or nearby organs. St. Joseph Cancer physicians can tailor individualized treatment plans much more precisely, which drastically reduces treatment time for patients. Treatments also can be delivered more efficiently in fewer and shorter treatment sessions.
This technology, unavailable at this center prior, is housed in its own structural enclosure which is fully isolated from the environment, so all operations, procedures and tests can be performed safely within the 2,400 sq. ft. “container” of the LINAC, built to exceed all existing Department of Health codes.
