CLEVELAND, April 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ViewRay, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRAY) announced today that the University Clinic Heidelberg in Germany has completed installation and commissioning of the hospital's new MRIdian Linac, the next-generation linear accelerator-based MR image-guided radiation therapy system. Patient treatments are expected to commence in the coming weeks.

ViewRay's MRIdian is the world's first and only commercially available MR image-guided radiotherapy system, and the MRIdian Linac installation at University Clinic Heidelberg marks the first of ViewRay's linear-accelerator based systems to complete installation and commissioning in Europe since the company received its CE Mark.

The MRIdian Linac program at Heidelberg will be headed by Medical Director and Professor Jürgen Debus, M.D., Ph.D., who also heads radiation oncology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), as well as the Heidelberg and Marburg Heavy Ion Centers (HIT and MIT). The University Clinic Heidelberg and DKFZ will serve as an important MRIdian research partner, helping to explore a wide array of topics, including the potential for improved dose delivery through MRI-guidance and various clinical outcomes studies related to the combination of MRI-guidance and Linac-based technology.

MR-image guided radiation therapy represents a fundamental change from conventional radiotherapy by providing diagnostic-quality visualization of soft-tissue targets and surrounding organs. This recent technological advance enables daily on-table treatment plan modifications to adjust radiation beam delivery dynamically for subtle anatomical changes that may occur, both during treatment delivery and throughout the course of treatment. Combined, these capabilities provide the potential for clinicians to improve targeting precision and thus deliver higher radiation doses.

"I am fascinated by the MRIdian Linac's image quality and integrated system design, which may allow for unprecedented treatment quality," said Professor Debus. "We are grateful to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for granting us the opportunity to utilize such a cutting-edge instrument to investigate the benefits of soft-tissue visualization and real-time plan adaptation to improve our patient treatment."

"The MRIdian Linac installation in Heidelberg is part of our initiative for MRI-based radiation therapy," said Dr. Christian Renner, Program Director of the German Research Foundation (DFG), Germany's largest research funding organization. "We are delighted to support the internationally outstanding radio-oncology research by Prof. Debus and his colleagues in Heidelberg with this exciting new instrumentation that opens both new research fields and new treatment options for cancer patients."