Advanced Search
Current and Breaking News for Professionals, Consumers and Media




Cancer Issues Author: Staff Editor Last Updated: Sep 7, 2017 - 10:06:33 PM



Rice Students Create Way to Keep Cancer Patients Upright for Radiation Treatment

By Staff Editor
Apr 11, 2013 - 9:57:41 AM



Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for our Ezine
For Email Marketing you can trust


Email this article
 Printer friendly page

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - HOUSTON - (April 11, 2013) - A new chair developed by engineering students at Rice University will make radiation therapy sessions for cancer patients more comfortable and more effective.
In cooperation with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, five Rice students have developed a seat that helps patients relax as they stay perfectly still while precise beams of radiation attack tumors. The device is the students' senior capstone design project, required of most Rice engineering students for graduation.

Patients seated in the chair face forward with their chests on the chair back and heads resting on a ring. Pads for their knees support their weight, and bars allow them to get a stable grip during the treatment, which can last up to 15 minutes.
Laurence Court, an assistant professor of radiation physics at MD Anderson, asked Rice to help develop this one component of a comprehensive effort to improve the patient experience. Traditionally, Court said, patients have had to lie down on a bench to be imaged by computed tomography (CT) scanners that pinpoint the location of tumors. 
But the technology is improving, he said, and versions of the cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners often used for orthodontics are now commonplace for cancer treatment. 
In the new project, rather than move the imaging and radiation equipment around the patient, the patient will move inside the equipment. The bench will be mounted to a turntable and the Rice components will be attached for patients who are more comfortable sitting up than lying down.
"We do have a chair because sometimes we treat people in an upright position, but it's sort of prehistoric," Court said. "If you really can't lie down and we absolutely must treat you, we would use it, but it's not a high-tech treatment. Whereas the chair the students have developed will bring seated CT treatments into the modern era, allowing us to position the patients in a more comfortable position while taking advantage of all the imaging available with modern treatment machines. 
"You'd be amazed how much excitement there is here about this device," he said. 
The members of Team Rad - Sarah Mason, Jina Ko, Nathan Han, Samuel Stein and Brandon Nguyen - picked up the challenge and quickly decided a modified massage chair had potential. The chair was easy to relax in and provided a clear shot at tumors from many positions with CBCT and radiation equipment.
The team worked closely with Court and their Rice advisers, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen Director Maria Oden and Matthew Wettergreen, a lecturer in engineering. "Before we did any brainstorming, we set up times for all of us to go (to MD Anderson) and observe, talk to the radiologist, see the current standard of care and the treatment process," Mason said. 
Mason said patients who are sitting breathe easier and are "less likely to fidget. Also, their tissue is expanded and held more taut, so it's less likely to shift."
The Rice students' comfy chair is in reality a set of highly adjustable components that attach to the bench. The attachments allow patients to hold still more easily as the machines do their work and can be set to the same positions for repeat sessions. The students used smartphone cameras and apps to track movements as they tested the chair over long periods and found they could not only hold still, but also could get up and reliably get back into the same positions.
"We put in as many discrete things as possible to make a quick adjustment with few continuous pieces," Stein said. "The biggest things you would adjust for are height, for which you adjust the chest rest and the head support, and arm length, which is in one of the (interchangeable) chest supports. It should be a really quick process."
"The whole thing integrates with our current work process really nicely," Court said. 
Court said MD Anderson is filing for a patent on the students' and hospital's behalf and hopes to have the entire system ready to treat patients in a year. 
-30-
Watch a video about Team Rad at http://youtu.be/T6JL6y2JGtY
This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2013/04/11/cheers-for-a-comfy-chair/
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Related Materials:
Team Rad: http://oedk.rice.edu/Content/Members/MemberPublicProfile.aspx?pageId=1063096&memberId=8215688
Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen: http://oedk.rice.edu
George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://engr.rice.edu
Rice Center for Engineering Leadership: http://rcel.rice.edu
Images for download:

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0415_RAD-1-web.jpg
Rice University engineering students, from left, Samuel Stein, Jina Ko, Sarah Mason and Brandon Nguyen have developed a chair to ease the burden of patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer. Not pictured: Team member Nathan Han. (Credit: Tommy LaVergne/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0415_RAD-2-web.jpg
Rice University engineering student Sarah Mason demonstrates the radiation therapy chair developed by students in cooperation with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. (Credit: Tommy LaVergne/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.
###For advertising and promotion on HealthNewsDigest.com, call or email Mike McCurdy at: 877-634-9180 or [email protected] are syndicated worldwide and have over 7,000 journalists as subscribers who may use our content for their own media.



Top of Page

HealthNewsDigest.com

Cancer Issues
Latest Headlines


+ Cancer and Mental Health
+ Immunotherapy Drug Shows Continued Promise in Several Advanced-Stage Cancers
+ Find New Mechanism to Turn on Cancer-Killing T Cells
+ Back to the Trails After Cancer Rehabilitation
+ Breakthrough COVID Infections More Likely in Cancer and Alzheimer’s Patients
+ Consider all Treatment Options for Ovarian Cancer
+ Men Need to Take Melanoma Seriously
+ Melanoma a Higher Risk for Older Veterans
+ Precision Medicine Approach to Metabolic Therapy for Breast Cancer
+ Test for Multiple Myeloma Provides Clues of a Rare, More Deadly Type



Contact Us | Job Listings | Help | Site Map | About Us
Advertising Information | HND Press Release | Submit Information | Disclaimer

Site hosted by Sanchez Productions