RapidArc® is an advanced technology from Varian Medical Systems that improves dose conformity to the tumors while significantly shortens treatment time. The first installation in Asia took places in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and CGMH was the first hospital in Taiwan to install this newest technique.

1. RapidArc is a type of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) that delivers a precisely sculpted 3D dose distribution with a single 360-degree rotation of the linear accelerator gantry. Compared to fixed-angle treatment plan, it can spares more normal healthy tissue. 
   
2. Deliver intensity modulated plan using newest type linac accelerator through automatic computer control, gives radiation dose to the tumor in precise and fast fashion. 
   
3. Volumetric modulated arc therapy differs from existing techniques like helical IMRT (e.g. Tomotherapy), because it delivers dose to the whole volume, rather than slice by slice.
   

Advantages

1. Using multiple intensity modulated fields through a single arc delivery, in other words, RapidArc® can improve patient quality of life by most optimized dose distribution. 
   
2. RapidArc® delivers treatments two to eight times faster than our fastest dynamic IMRT treatments today. Due to RapidArc® delivers the whole volumetric dose, it takes less than two minutes to finish one treatment. It can reduce dose error caused by organ or body motion during treatment and minimize discomfort by long treatment time. 
   
3. As compared with IMRT, intensity volumetric arc therapy can use less radiation output with the same prescribed dose. It can reduce whole body scattered dose to the patient. 
   
4. It has Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) and On-Board Imager (OBI) image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) technologies for patient localization.