Radiation Oncology & Therapy in NJ

About half of all cancer patients receive some form of radiation therapy. At Atlantic Health System Cancer Care, our radiation therapy and radiation oncology programs are nationally recognized for innovative services and exceptional care.

We provide our patients with the most technologically-advanced radiation treatments available, including three dimensional (3-D) conformal external beam therapy and high-performance linear accelerators with multileaf collimation, to destroy cancerous cells and shrink tumors. Some of the cancers we treat include those of the breast, prostate, lung, rectum, colon, cervix, head and neck, stomach, pancreas and uterus.

At Morristown Medical Center, we also use radiation therapy to treat patients with non-cancerous conditions, such as Dupuytren’s contracture – a hand deformity caused by a painless thickening of the skin – and heterotopic ossification – a condition where bone develops in areas of soft tissue, often as a result of orthopedic trauma.

Treatment Planning

Our special 3-D treatment planning systems and a simulator are used to plan patients’ radiation treatment regimes. In our radiation oncology program, every patient’s treatment plan is reviewed by our multidisciplinary team of board-certified radiation oncologists, medical physicists, radiation therapists, oncology nurses who specialize in the needs of radiation patients, oncology-certified nutritionists, and licensed oncology social workers. Some cancer patients may also be candidates for RealART Real-Time Treatment Planning (RTP) .

Our radiation therapy and radiation oncology treatment programs include:

High-performance linear accelerator: – A traditional radiation technique that targets cancer while preserving as much healthy tissue as possible.

Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT): – Morristown Medical was the first hospital in the United States to implement IGRT. To date, we have performed more than radiation 10,000 treatments.

IGRT combines a 16-slice computed tomography scanner with a linear accelerator (CTLINAC), allowing the tumor to be located and visualized within seconds prior to every treatment, with sharper and more precise images than other radiation treatment technologies.

Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT): – IMRT is the most advanced form of radiation treatment today. This treatment employs a highly non-uniform beam to create greater conformal dose distributions, maximizing the dose of radiation to the cancer without increasing side effects.
Brachytherapy treatment: – Brachytherapy applies a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor while sparing healthy tissue and surrounding organs. At Morristown Medical, we have been treating patients with this technology for more than ten years and have completed more than 4,000 procedures.
High dose rate brachytherapy: – This radiation treatment, in which a radioactive source is placed inside a catheter in the tumor for a short period of time, can be used for different types of cancer, including lung, esophageal, gynecological, prostate and recurrent cancers.