Varian Medical Systems and Siemens Healthcare announce global collaboration to advance clinical capabilities and offerings in radiotherapy and radiosurgery.

Varian Medical Systems and Siemens Healthcare have announced the signing of a strategic global partnership to provide advanced diagnostic and therapeutic solutions and services for treating cancer with image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery. The collaboration covers the mutual marketing and representation of products for imaging and treatment in the global radiation oncology business. This collaboration further comprises the development of software interfaces between Siemens and Varian treatment systems. The two companies will also investigate opportunities for joint development of new products for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery.

Under the agreement that was signed this week, Varian will represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products such as CT, PET/CT or MRI to radiation oncology clinics around the world beginning immediately in most international markets and expanding to North America later this year. Siemens Healthcare will similarly represent Varian equipment and software for radiotherapy and radiosurgery within its offerings to its healthcare customers. This will enable the companies to offer comprehensive solutions to support the entire clinical workflow from imaging to treatment. Siemens will continue to service and support its global installed base of approximately 2,000 medical linear accelerators. The agreement will give Siemens customers more choices for therapy equipment, including smooth transition and interface to Varian equipment, as aging accelerators are due for replacement.

Furthermore, Varian and Siemens will develop interfaces that will enable connecting Varian

A team from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) has developed a technique to measure internal cell temperatures without altering their metabolism. This finding could be useful when distinguishing healthy cells from cancerous ones, as well as learning more about cellular processes.
Temperature controls many of the cell’s life processes, such as splitting and metabolism. A European research team led by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), which has the Severo Ochoa mark of excellence, has published a non-invasive method that offers quicker, more precise data from measuring intracellular heat from green fluorescent proteins (GFP).
‘A unique characteristic of our method is that it does not alter any cellular process’ Romain Quidant, ICFO researcher and study co-ordinator, explains to SINC. Unlike other techniques, this method does not stress or alter the behaviour of the cell as it does not need to be inserted into any molecules or any other synthetic nano-object that is sensitive to the internal temperature.
One of the most promising outcomes is a better understanding of cellular processes, such as those involved in metastasis. Furthermore, the possibility of obtaining information about intracellular temperature could be used to ‘differentiate normal cells from cancerous ones in a quick, non-invasive manner’ Sebastian Thompson Parga, ICFO researcher and co-author of the project.
From intracellular temperature, we can deduce how the energy used by the body in the uncontrolled spreading of cancer cells flows.
In this interdisciplinary study, biology uses physical measurements of energy transmission to study processes such as gene expression, metabolism and cell splitting.
The technique used is known by the name of ‘fluorescence polarisation anisotropy’ (FPA) as it allows the difference in polarisation between light that fluorescent molecules receive, and that which they emit later, to be measured. In the words of Quidant, ‘this difference in polarisation (anisotropy) is directly connected to the rotating of the GFP molecules and therefore with temperature’.
The authors of the study ensure that biologists will be able to implement this technique in experimental set-ups and obtain the cell temperature as another observable detail. In 2008, when Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien won the Nobel Chemistry Prize for discovering and developing GFP, they resolved many complications in biomedical research. EurekAlert

Scientists have developed a new way to create electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays – the technology behind full-body security scanners. The researchers behind the study say their new stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the ‘tricorder’ scanner used in Star Trek.
In the study, researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, and Imperial College London in the UK have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam than was previously thought possible, and have done so at room-temperature conditions. This is a breakthrough that should allow future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper than current devices.
The scientists say that the T-ray scanner and detector could provide part of the functionality of a Star Trek-like medical ‘tricorder’ – a portable sensing, computing and data communications device – since the waves are capable of detecting biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths. Future scanners could also perform fast wireless data communication to transfer a high volume of information on the measurements it makes.
T-rays are waves in the far infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum that have a wavelength hundreds of times longer than those that make up visible light. Such waves are already in use in airport security scanners, prototype medical scanning devices and in spectroscopy systems for materials analysis. T-rays can sense molecules such as those present in cancerous tumours and living DNA, since every molecule has its unique signature in the THz range. They can also be used to detect explosives or drugs, for gas pollution monitoring or non-destructive testing of semiconductor integrated circuit chips.
Current T-ray imaging devices are very expensive and operate at only a low output power, since creating the waves consumes large amounts of energy and needs to take place at very low temperatures.
In the new technique, the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to produce a strong beam of T-rays by shining light of differing wavelengths on a pair of electrodes – two pointed strips of metal separated by a 100 nanometre gap on top of a semiconductor wafer. The structure of the tip-to-tip nano-sized gap electrode greatly enhances the THz field and acts like a nano-antenna to amplify the wave generated. In this method, THz waves are produced by an interaction between the electromagnetic waves of the light pulses and a powerful current passing between the semiconductor electrodes. The scientists are able to tune the wavelength of the T-rays to create a beam that is useable in the scanning technology.
Lead author Dr Jing Hua Teng, from A*STAR

Aberdeen researchers have discovered how a controversial but effective treatment in psychiatry acts on the brain in people who are severely depressed.
Electroconvulsive therapy or ECT – which involves anaesthetising a patient and electrically inducing a seizure – is the most potent treatment option for patients with serious mood disorder.
Despite being used successfully in clinical practice around the world for more than 70 years, the underlying mechanisms of ECT have so far remained unclear.
Now a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has shown for the first time that ECT affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression