PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University’s Kimmel Cancer Center are working on a new way to deliver radiation to save healthy tissue.

When a patient undergoes radiation, every time he breathes or his heart beats, the cancerous tumor may move, so doctors must radiate the tumor site and an area around it to account for the movement. But doctors at Jefferson have come up with a radiation table that moves to offset any change in tumor location.

Dr. Ivan Buzurovic a medical physics resident says the old way works, but damage is done.

“Tumor will be cured but a lot of amount of healthy tissue will be radiated.”

He says this new method spares adjacent organs and would allow doctors to deliver a higher dose of radiation just to the tumor.

Reported by Lynne Adkins, KYW Newsradio