5B02b-Image Guided Stereotactic radiosurgery

From Linac based to Gamma Knife to CyberKnife

Cheng Yu, Ph.D.

Professor and Director of Physics

Department of Radiation Oncology

Keck School of Medicine

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California

Stereotactic radiosurgery was first introduced in 1951 by Lars Leksell, who developed Gamma Knife in the late 1960’s. In the early days of stereotactic radiosurgery, a single fraction of high radiation dose was delivered to a well-defined small intracranial target, which was immobilized by using a headframe. In 1988, the concept of image-guided frameless SRS was proposed by John Adler, who subsequently designed and developed the CyberKnife system. In this presentation, the history of the development of stereotactic radiosurgery will be briefly reviewed, followed by our experience with stereotactic radiosurgery using the linac based, Leksell Gamma Knife systems. Finally, our experience with stereotactic radiosurgery for both intracranial and extracranial lesions using the image guided CyberKnife system will be presented.