Tungsten Alloy Gamma Knife

Tungsten alloy gamma knife, also called gamma-ray stereotactic treatment system, is a radiation treatment integrating directional technique with radiological technology to treat craniocerebral diseases and other diseases. The working principle of tungsten alloy gamma knife is collecting the gamma rays which released from the decay of Co60 radioactive element to irradiate the primary target in the body by the collimator to fatally destroy the target tissues, to cut and destroy a tumour. Instead of a scalpel, gamma rays can effective avoid the major tissues, and create an obvious boundary between a therapeutic irradiation range and normal tissues that likes a knife cutting, so people aptly called it "gamma knife". The biggest characteristic of tungsten alloy gamma knife is avoid the surgical operation to reduce the burden and risk of patients with intracranial tumor.

Tungsten alloy gamma knife to be divided into head gamma knife and body gamma knife. Head gamma knife can be used for the treatment of meningioma, pituitary tumor, neurofibroma, glioma, brain metastases, melanoma, craniopharyngioma, trigeminal neuralgia; while body gamma knife is used for treating general tumour, such as lung cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, adrenal tumors, kidney cancer, retroperitoneal tumor and pelvic tumors, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, etc. Tungsten alloy gamma knife is a radioactive therapy. The rays it uses are gamma rays which have high killing ability to penetrate both normal tissues and tumor tissues, and the killing ability increases with the increasing of the irradiation scope and irradiation time. Gamma rays can also burn tissues and make them unable to repair themselves, then affect the tissues are not burned. During or after the process of radiotherapy, gamma radiation also lead to nausea and vomiting, alopecia areata, localized numbness, movement disorder and decline in platelets, white blood cells, pancytopenia, immune function and in severe cases can cause radiation sickness, such as radioactive myelitis, radioactive Japanese encephalitis. Therefore, tungsten alloy is usually used as the material of the metal shielding, fixed collimator, collimator helmets of gamma knife.

Some components of gamma knife  is made of tungsten heavy alloy for its' high density and good absorption of gamma radiation (such as a metal shielding, collimator, etc.). Since the density of tungsten alloy can reach so high, so it has a ideal radiation shielding effectiveness to shield and absorb gamma radiation, avoiding gamma rays killing the patient's normal tissues, to reduce the level of injury to the patient. And compared with other conventional shielding materials (such as lead), tungsten alloy is found no harm to people or the environment.

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