Karmanos Cancer Institute
Radiation Oncology

Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART) is the future of personalized radiation therapy. Varian Ethos therapy is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven holistic solution designed to increase the capability, flexibility and efficiency of radiation therapy.

Brachytherapy is a type of internal radiation therapy in which seeds, ribbons, or capsules that contain a radiation source are placed in your body, in or near the tumor. Brachytherapy is a local treatment and treats only a specific part of your body. It is often used to treat cancers of the head and neck, breast, cervix, prostate and eye.

External beam radiation therapy comes from a machine that aims radiation at your cancer. The machine is large and may be noisy. It does not touch you, but can move around you, sending radiation to a part of your body from many directions. External beam radiation therapy is a local treatment, which means it treats a specific part of your body. For example, if you have cancer in your lung, you will have radiation only to your chest, not to your whole body.

Gamma Knife surgery is a clinically proven method to treat select intracranial locations – such as the brain, brain stem or the trigeminal nerve. Despite its name, Gamma Knife® Icon™ is not a blade that cuts, but highly sophisticated non-invasive technology that uses radiation to damage targeted tissue in a very precise manner. When it comes to sparing healthy brain and body tissue, no other radiosurgery technique can match Gamma Knife® Icon™. Preserving tissue helps maintain normal function that can impact quality of life.

Proton therapy is a radiation oncology treatment that uses protons to precisely target and treat tumors, while sparing healthy tissues and organs from unnecessary radiation.

Proton Therapy is non-invasive. Proton therapy does not require surgical procedures to deliver treatment. As the patient lays on the table, radiation is delivered through protons that are directed to travel in the body, no further than the depth of the targeted tumor. The decision to use proton therapy not only depends on where the tumor is located, but also includes many factors that will be reviewed by your radiation oncologist. Proton therapy is most often beneficial for solid tumors near radiation-sensitive organs.

A type of external radiation therapy that uses special equipment to position the patient and precisely delivers radiation to a tumor. The total dose of radiation is divided into several smaller doses given over several days. Stereotactic radiation therapy is used to treat brain tumors and other brain disorders. It is also being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer, such as lung cancer. Also called stereotactic external-beam radiation therapy and stereotaxic radiation therapy.

Theranostics is the combination of therapy and diagnostics. This form of treatment uses radioactive medicine to combine diagnostic imaging and therapy to provide our patients with a targeted treatment option. Part of this option includes Radiopharmaceuticals (RPT). RPT is a treatment technique that uses a drug which carries a radioactive compound that targets cancer cells. RPT targets cancer cells specifically, sticking to them and breaking them down over time, and reduces the amount of radiation exposure to normal, healthy tissue. The treatment is delivered intravenously (through an IV) and is often recommended for patients whose disease has not previously responded to other lines of treatment.

A type of radiation therapy that is given to the entire body. Total-body irradiation is often used with high-dose anticancer drugs to help prepare a patient for a stem cell transplant. It is done to kill any cancer cells that are left in the body and helps make room in the patient’s bone marrow for new blood stem cells to grow. Total-body irradiation may also help prevent the body’s immune system from rejecting the transplanted stem cells.