CyberKnife Technology and Treatment Center
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Overview
At AIROC Hospitals, CyberKnife delivers highly focused beams of radiation to tumours from hundreds of different angles using a robotic arm, with continuous image guidance that tracks the tumour as it moves with your breathing. Despite the name, there is no cutting and no anaesthesia. Treatment is completed in one to five painless outpatient sessions, and patients typically return to normal activity immediately afterwards.
Advanced Robotic Radiosurgery in Hyderabad
Conventional radiotherapy delivers a modest dose each day over five to seven weeks, because the beams must pass through healthy tissue that cannot tolerate more. CyberKnife inverts that approach. A compact linear accelerator mounted on a robotic arm moves around the patient, delivering narrow beams from hundreds of distinct positions that intersect precisely at the tumour. Each individual beam is weak enough to leave the tissue it passes through unharmed; where they converge, the combined dose is high enough to destroy the target. This allows an entire course of treatment to be compressed into one to five sessions.
What distinguishes the system is what it does about movement. Tumours in the lung, liver, and pancreas shift several centimetres with each breath, and conventional treatment compensates by irradiating a larger margin around the target. CyberKnife instead takes X-ray images throughout treatment and adjusts the robotic arm in real time to follow the tumour as it moves, so the margin can be kept tight. Nothing needs to be bolted to the skull, no invasive head frame is required, and patients breathe normally throughout. Treatment is planned by our radiation oncologists with medical physicists and reviewed at multidisciplinary tumour board, and every plan undergoes independent physics verification before delivery. AIROC Hospitals is a NABH and JCI accredited facility operating under AERB-compliant radiation safety protocols.
Conditions Treated
Brain Tumours & Metastases
Primary brain tumours, meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, and secondary deposits treated without opening the skull — an option for lesions that are surgically inaccessible or in patients unfit for surgery.
Acoustic Neuroma & Skull Base Tumours
Benign tumours near critical nerves where surgery risks hearing loss or facial weakness. Radiosurgery controls growth while preserving function in the majority of cases.
Arteriovenous Malformations (AVM)
Abnormal tangles of brain blood vessels that carry a risk of haemorrhage, treated non-invasively to induce gradual closure over months.
Spine & Spinal Cord Tumours
Vertebral and paraspinal tumours lying millimetres from the spinal cord, where the steep dose gradient allows effective treatment without exceeding cord tolerance — including re-treatment of previously irradiated levels in selected cases.
Early-Stage Lung Cancer
Small, node-negative lung tumours in patients who cannot undergo surgery due to poor lung function or other illness, with real-time respiratory tracking following the tumour as it moves.
Prostate Cancer
Localised prostate cancer treated in five sessions rather than eight weeks of daily attendance, using implanted fiducial markers to track prostate position precisely throughout each session.
Liver & Pancreatic Tumours
Primary and secondary liver lesions and selected pancreatic tumours, where motion tracking and sharp dose fall-off protect surrounding bowel, stomach, and normal liver.
Oligometastatic Disease
Patients with a small number of metastatic deposits, where ablating each site can meaningfully extend disease control alongside systemic therapy.
Trigeminal Neuralgia
Severe facial pain unresponsive to medication, treated with a single highly focused dose to the trigeminal nerve root as an alternative to open surgery.
Recurrent & Previously Irradiated Tumours
Recurrence in a region that has already received radiation, where the tight dose distribution sometimes permits safe re-treatment when conventional radiotherapy cannot.
Why CyberKnife
Non-Invasive
No incision, no anaesthesia, no head frame, and no hospital admission. Patients walk in, are treated, and walk out.
Extreme Precision
Sub-millimetre accuracy allows tumours adjacent to the spinal cord, optic nerves, and brainstem to be treated at doses conventional radiotherapy cannot safely deliver.
Real-Time Motion Tracking
Continuous imaging during treatment lets the robot follow tumours that move with breathing, avoiding the wide safety margins that would otherwise be needed.
Treatment in 1 to 5 Sessions
A full course is completed in days rather than weeks, reducing travel, cost, time away from work, and the interruption to systemic treatment.
Fewer Side Effects
Because so little dose reaches healthy tissue, side effects are generally milder and shorter-lived than with conventional radiotherapy.
An Option When Surgery Is Not
For patients unfit for anaesthesia, on blood thinners, or with tumours in inoperable locations, radiosurgery can offer treatment where surgery cannot.
The Treatment Process
Consultation & Suitability Assessment
Your radiation oncologist reviews imaging, pathology, and previous treatment to determine whether radiosurgery is appropriate for your tumour type, size, and location, and discusses it against surgical and conventional radiotherapy options.
Fiducial Placement (Where Required)
For prostate, lung, liver, and pancreatic tumours, tiny gold markers are placed near the tumour in a short day-care procedure so the system can track its position precisely. Brain and spine treatments generally do not require this.
Imaging & Immobilisation
A planning CT is performed, often fused with MRI or PET for accurate target definition. A custom mesh mask is made for head treatments or a moulded cushion for the body — comfortable, non-invasive, and simply to help you stay still.
Treatment Planning
The tumour and all nearby critical structures are contoured, and the system computes a plan using hundreds of beam angles. Planning takes several days and is independently verified by a medical physicist before approval.
Treatment Delivery
You lie on the treatment couch, fully awake and breathing normally, while the robotic arm moves around you delivering beams from many positions. Each session takes roughly 30 to 90 minutes. You feel nothing, and can talk to staff throughout via intercom.
Follow-Up
You go home the same day and usually resume normal activity immediately. Response is assessed with scheduled imaging over the following months, since tumours shrink gradually rather than immediately after radiosurgery.
Technology & Facilities
The CyberKnife service at AIROC Hospitals, Hyderabad offers advanced infrastructure for precise, non-invasive robotic radiosurgery.
The facilities at AIROC Hospitals for CyberKnife include:
- Robotic Linear Accelerator with Multi-Directional Beam Delivery
- Real-Time Image Guidance & Tumour Tracking
- Respiratory Motion Synchronisation
- Frameless, Non-Invasive Immobilisation Systems
- CT, MRI & PET-CT Image Fusion for Target Definition
- Advanced Inverse Treatment Planning System
- Independent Physics Verification of Every Plan
- On-Site Medical Physics & Dosimetry Team
- Multidisciplinary Tumour Board Review
- AERB-Compliant Radiation Safety Protocols