New Elekta Unity MR Linac cancer treatment machine arrives at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital

A special imaging scanner that enables radiation treatment with unprecedented pinpoint accuracy for cancer patients has arrived in Sydney.

Retired Sydney headmaster Rod Brooks could become the first person in New South Wales to beat cancer with the help of the $6 million machine. The 68-year-old fought bowel cancer more than a decade ago. But in April, he received shocking news. “Then I got the diagnosis of prostate cancer - and it did come as a bit of a shock, and I thought ‘that’s enough I think’,” Brooks told 7NEWS. The former principal is one of 20,000 people diagnosed with prostate cancer every year.

The Elekta Unity MR Linac machine is just the second in Australia. It was carefully installed by crane at the GensisCare centre in Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital - where Brooks is in his final week of treatment.

“I’m really delighted by the lack of invasive work going on, I basically lay there and listen to music,” he said. The machine combines radiation therapy with an MRI scanner so doctors can find and treat cancer at the same time. “It’s probably the most important advancements in radiotherapy in a long time,” GenesisCare Radiation Oncologist Dr Jeremy De Leon said.

“Our treatment is more accurate and more precise. And this is something we haven’t been able to do until this technology came around.”