machines-wave

AngioDynamics makes the NanoKnife irreversible electroporation system, which destroys pancreatic and prostate tumours with electrical pulses rather than heat, plus microwave and radiofrequency ablation probes and vascular access ports used in chemotherapy.

Beckman Coulter, part of Danaher, makes the Navios, DxFLEX and CytoFLEX flow cytometers used in haematology laboratories to type leukaemias and measure residual disease, together with automated haematology analysers and centrifuges.

A radiotherapy machine with PET detectors built in: the tumour's own radioactive tracer signal tells the beam where to fire, hundreds of times a second, so moving tumours and several metastases can be tracked and treated without external markers.

The standard radiotherapy machine: an electron accelerator in a rotating arm that makes high-energy X-rays or electron beams, shapes them with moving metal leaves, and takes a CT of the patient before each dose. Most people who have radiotherapy are treated on one.

Carbon ions are twelve times heavier than protons, so every clinical facility uses a synchrotron ring tens of metres across and fixed or huge rotating beamlines. Only about a dozen centres exist, in Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Carl Zeiss Meditec makes Intrabeam, a miniature X-ray source used to give a single dose of radiation to the breast tumour bed during surgery, and the Kinevo surgical microscopes whose blue-light and infrared modes make brain tumours glow during resection.

CMR Surgical makes Versius, a compact modular surgical robot from Cambridge whose small independent arms fit existing operating theatres; it is used for colorectal, gynaecological and urological cancer operations in Europe, India and elsewhere and received US authorisation in 2024.

Killing a tumour by freezing it through one or more needles, with the ice ball watched live on CT, ultrasound or MRI. It hurts less than heat, spares nearby nerves and collecting systems better, and is the usual choice for small kidney tumours, painful bone metastases and, in trials, small breast cancers.

A small accelerator on an industrial robot arm that aims hundreds of pencil-thin beams from any direction and follows the tumour as the patient breathes, so brain, spine, prostate, lung and pancreatic tumours can be treated in one to five sessions without a head frame.

Cytek Biosciences makes the Aurora and Northern Lights full-spectrum flow cytometers, which read the whole emission spectrum of every dye so forty or more markers can be measured on each cell, used in immunology, cell therapy development and clinical haematology.

CT scanned at two X-ray energies at once, so the scanner can tell iodine contrast from calcium and soft tissue, show exactly how much a tumour enhances, and remove the contrast digitally to save a second scan.

Two upgrades to the ordinary ultrasound machine: elastography measures how stiff a lump is (cancers are usually hard), and microbubble contrast shows how blood flows through it in real time, with no radiation and no kidney-toxic dye.

A machine that streams cells one at a time past lasers and reads the fluorescent tags stuck to each one, counting tens of thousands of cells a second. It is how leukaemias and lymphomas are typed, how residual disease is measured after treatment, and how cell therapies are checked before infusion.

Fujifilm moved from photographic film into medical imaging and now sells digital X-ray, mammography, ultrasound, endoscopes and, since buying Hitachi's imaging business in 2021, CT and MRI scanners.

The original radiosurgery machine: about two hundred cobalt-60 sources arranged in a shielded helmet whose beams cross at one point inside the brain, so a metastasis or benign tumour a few millimetres across receives a destructive dose in a single visit while the brain around it is spared.

Hitachi builds synchrotron-based proton therapy systems for centres such as MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic, St. Jude, Johns Hopkins and Hokkaido University, and carbon-ion facilities in Osaka and Taipei.

IceCure Medical makes ProSense, a liquid-nitrogen cryoablation system used to freeze small breast, kidney, lung and bone tumours through a single needle in an outpatient visit; its ICE3 trial tested it as an alternative to surgery for small low-risk breast cancers in older women.

Scanners built into or next to the operating theatre, so the surgeon can check during a brain tumour or spine operation how much tumour is left and remove more before closing.

Mediso is a Hungarian nuclear medicine company making AnyScan SPECT/CT and PET/CT cameras for hospitals and nanoScan PET/MRI and SPECT/CT scanners for preclinical research.

Medtronic is the largest medical device company; in cancer care it sells the Hugo surgical robot, Emprint microwave and Cool-tip radiofrequency ablation systems, the O-arm intraoperative imaging and StealthStation navigation, and the GI Genius artificial-intelligence polyp detector.

Cooking a tumour from the inside through a needle. Radiofrequency current was the first method and is proven for small liver cancers; microwave energy heats faster, makes larger zones and is less troubled by nearby blood vessels carrying the heat away, so it is now the more common choice.

Mindray is China's largest medical device company, selling Resona ultrasound systems with shear-wave elastography and contrast imaging, patient monitors and laboratory analysers in more than a hundred countries.

MRI scanners are sold by the strength of their magnet. 1.5 tesla is the reliable workhorse, 3 tesla gives more signal for prostate, brain and breast imaging, and 7 tesla is a research-grade brain scanner; stronger is not simply better, because artefacts, heating and implant restrictions grow with the field.

A new kind of CT detector that counts every X-ray photon and records its energy, giving sharper pictures at lower dose and colour-like tissue information from every scan.

Profound Medical makes TULSA-PRO, which ablates prostate tissue from inside the urethra with ultrasound under real-time MRI temperature control, and Sonalleve MR-guided focused ultrasound for fibroids and painful bone metastases.

ProTom International makes the Radiance 330, a compact synchrotron-based proton therapy system installed at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLaren in Michigan.

Proton centres are built around one of three accelerators, a cyclotron, a synchrotron or a compact synchrocyclotron, feeding one or several treatment rooms through magnets and a rotating gantry the size of a house. Single-room systems have cut the price of entry, and upright treatment chairs may shrink the building again.

The machine that makes modern brachytherapy safe for staff: a shielded safe holding one tiny, intensely radioactive source on a cable, which it drives out through tubes into applicators inside the patient, dwells at programmed positions, and pulls back before anyone re-enters the room.

A radiotherapy machine built like a CT scanner: the accelerator spins inside an enclosed ring, must image the patient before every dose, and treats fast. Ethos adds software that redraws the plan to the anatomy of the day while the patient lies on the couch.

Shimadzu is a Kyoto instrument maker whose medical division sells X-ray, fluoroscopy and angiography systems and whose analytical division built the mass spectrometers that won a Nobel Prize.

A gamma camera with a CT scanner bolted on, so a hot spot on a bone scan or a sentinel-node scan is pinned to the exact bone or lymph node, and the dose from a radioactive drug can be measured after treatment.

Sumitomo Heavy Industries builds cyclotron-based proton therapy systems for centres including Samsung Medical Center and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, medical cyclotrons for PET isotopes, and the first approved accelerator for boron neutron capture therapy.

The surgeon sits at a console and moves wristed instruments through keyhole ports while a 3D camera shows the inside of the body magnified. Intuitive's da Vinci has dominated for two decades; Medtronic's Hugo and CMR's Versius are the first serious rivals, and single-port robots work through one incision.

Radiotherapy delivered the way a CT scan is taken: a small accelerator circles the patient while the couch slides through, painting the dose slice by slice with a fast shutter-like collimator. It handles very long or oddly shaped targets and images the patient with the same beam before each session.

Toshiba builds carbon-ion therapy facilities, including the superconducting rotating gantry at HIMAC in Chiba and the heavy-ion centres in Kanagawa, Yamagata and at Yonsei in Seoul.

ViewRay makes MRIdian, the MR-linac that pairs a low-field MRI with a linear accelerator so tumours in the pancreas, liver and prostate can be watched and the beam gated while it treats; the original company went bankrupt in 2023 and the business continues under new ownership.

The plain X-ray is the oldest and cheapest medical image: a single shadow picture of bone and lung. Fluoroscopy is the live-video version, used to steer needles, catheters and stents during cancer procedures.

A self-shielded brain radiosurgery machine: a compact accelerator swings around the head on two nested gantries inside its own steel shell, so it needs no concrete bunker and no radioactive cobalt, and can be installed in an ordinary outpatient building.