When the market (correctly) understood that CyberKnife was a truly unique and revolutionary technology, investors bid Accuray’s post-IPO shares up to an intraday high of $31.09 (9 February 2007). As Varian and others made repeated claims, in numerous press releases, interviews and conference calls, that their gantry-mounted machines could do the same thing as the robotically controlled CyberKnife, Accuray’s market cap shrank even though its economic fundamentals actually improved.

On 6 December 2008, Accuray, finally, fired back with the release of two animated videos that effectively demonstrate what CyberKnife is and why it is fundamentally different from gantry-mounted radiation sprayers. You can see them for yourself at http://www.accuray.com.

Since then, Accuray shares have gone up 40.73 percent while Varian’s share price has risen only 4.14 percent and Tomo only 6.75 percent versus an IHI index (medical equipment manufacturers) up 24.99 percent and a NASDAQ up 35.52 percent as of close of market Friday (30 October 2009).

Now comes Accuray’s pre-ASTRO press release and you can see why Varian has been so hell-bent to confuse the investment community as to the capabilities of gantry-mounted, co-planer machines versus the robotically controlled, multi-planer CyberKnife.

From Accuray Introduces the CyberKnife(R) VSI(TM) System:

"'There is a tremendous need for the capabilities built into the new CyberKnife VSI,' said Dwight Heron, M.D., chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at UPMC Shadyside. 'Depending on each individual patient's case, we will now be able to better tailor care so that the right amount of radiation is delivered to the right place in the right time frame for each patient, all with the same accuracy for which the CyberKnife is known.'"

Translation: Now that CyberKnife’s motion tracking real-time continual image guidance and robotic mobility can be applied to both conventionally fractionated IMRT as well as radiosurgery, every gantry-mounted radiation device is obsolete.

And since the new smaller footprint CyberKnife can fit in the same existing radiation vaults that now house obsolete equipment, it’s time to move those antique, aged, obsolete, gantry-bound, deaf-dumb-and-blind Varian radiation sprayers into some museum somewhere.

Accuray is Mercedes. Varian is Oldsmobile.