Cancer claims the lives of more than 500,000 Americans each year despite having the best current technology available for treatment. The medical community is looking for new combinations of surgery, radiation and drug therapy to improve survival for cancer patients. IORT is one very promising technique which has already shown itself to be effective in certain cases, but the use of which has heretofore been limited due to the inadequacy of the equipment.

IORT ideally should be given in the operating room ("OR"). However, conventional radiation equipment is very heavy and requires thick concrete walls to contain the stray radiation produced by the equipment. This has restricted OR based IORT to a handful of hospitals who have been able to absorb the high costs associated with the equipment and the construction of shielded room in the OR. Most of the 200 other hospitals throughout the world that conduct IORT do so by performing the operation in the OR and then transporting the patient, still under anesthesia and with the surgical site open, to the radiation facility for the radiation portion of their treatment. After the radiation treatment is completed, the patient is then transported back to the OR for the completion of the operation. This method of IORT involves very complex logistics, increases patient risk, and severely limits the number of patients that can be treated.

The Mobetron, developed by Intraop Medical, Inc., solves these problems, making IORT practical to deliver in the OR. Unlike other IORT systems, the Mobetron is designed to be used in operating rooms. Using proprietary technology, a light-weight electron beam accelerator is attached to a C-arm. Special designs in the accelerator system and C-arm eliminate the need to add costly shielding to the OR. And because it is mobile, it can be moved from one OR to another, allowing the Mobetron to be shared among several OR's in the same hospital. This mobility allows more patients to be treated, decreases patient risk and increases the cost-effectiveness of IORT.