Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week®
Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week® is a week aimed at advancing prevention, detection, treatment and rehabilitation of oral, head and neck cancer through public awareness, research, advocacy and survivorship (The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance).
Xoran has partnered with West Virginia University to develop a new technology to improve the treatment of head and neck cancers.
“What makes this system unique is that it has much higher resolution than the standard PET/CT system,” Raylman, vice chair of research for the Department of Radiology and a member of the WVU Cancer Institute, said. “The typical scanner systems are general. They’re designed to image brain tumors, breast tumors, prostate cancer. Instead of doing that, we decided to design one just for head and neck cancer. This system is designed for estimating the edges of the tumor as accurately as possible,” Raylman said. “The more accurately you can assess the size, shape and spread of the tumor, the more accurately — and, hopefully, effectively — you can plan either surgery or radiation therapy.”
The prototype was made possible by funding from the National Cancer Institute. It’s the result of a collaboration between West Virginia University, the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources’ Lane Innovation Hub, and Xoran Technologies.
