CyberKnife is a form of stereotactic radiosurgery: a robotic arm delivers many precisely focused radiation beams to destroy a tumour without cutting the skin. Live imaging tracks the tumour, including movement from breathing, so treatment is usually finished in one to five sessions.
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Next: could CyberKnife even treat your tumour?
Radiosurgery is brilliant at a few precise targets and useless against diffuse disease. Tick what applies — this is the same short-list a radiation oncologist runs through before opening your scans.
Strong CyberKnife candidate
On these answers your case sits squarely in the zone where radiosurgery does its best work — a small number of well-defined targets, in a situation where the scalpel is difficult or unwise. Send the scans and we will get a dose plan drafted rather than just an opinion.
Get this confirmed on my actual scansA self-check, not a diagnosis. Only the imaging decides — and reading it is free.
A lung or liver tumour travels one to three centimetres with every breath. A machine that cannot follow it has to irradiate a large safety box around the whole path. CyberKnife follows the target instead. Switch it off and watch what happens to the healthy tissue.
Safety margin required
3 mm
With live tracking the margin stays at a few millimetres regardless of how much you breathe.
Healthy tissue irradiated
baseline
This is the reference volume — the tumour plus a 3 mm rim, and almost nothing else.
Pick the tumour site to see how it would typically be tracked, treated and dosed — and how many conventional radiotherapy visits that replaces.
Type of tumour / site
tap a site to see details
The classic indication. One to ten deposits in the brain treated in a single session or up to five, targeting each lesion individually and sparing the hippocampus and the rest of the brain — which is what protects memory and thinking compared with whole-brain radiotherapy.
6D Skull Tracking — no head frame, no screws
No stereotactic head frame screwed into the skull: a soft thermoplastic mask plus live X-ray skull tracking gives the same sub-millimetre accuracy, comfortably.
No fiducial markers needed for this site — the skeleton or the tumour itself is tracked directly.
Visits compared
An illustration of radiobiology, not a prescription. Your real plan is written by a radiation oncologist and a medical physicist after they see your imaging and the organs around the target.
Each site is tracked differently. The mode determines whether you need markers implanted — and how tight the margin can be.
Next: what CyberKnife actually costs, line by line
Choose the tumour site and the number of sessions for an instant indicative range. Your exact figure comes back within 1 hour of us seeing your scans.
Brain metastases & brain tumours
Change the site in the planner above
Indicative ranges only. Final cost depends on the tumour site and size, number of lesions, number of sessions, whether fiducials or a re-plan are needed, and any concurrent chemotherapy or immunotherapy. We share a written, itemised estimate — with planning, fiducials and each session listed separately — before you travel.
Written estimate in 1 hour
Free radiation oncologist opinion within 4 hours of receiving your scans. No advance payment at any stage.
CyberKnife is superb at destroying a small number of well-defined targets and useless against disease that is spread diffusely. The honest position: for early inoperable lung cancer, brain metastases, spinal metastases and localised prostate cancer, outcomes rival the surgical alternative with a fraction of the disruption. It does not replace chemotherapy or immunotherapy for systemic disease.
The MRI or CT (ideally the DICOM files, not just the report), the PET-CT if done, biopsy or histopathology, and a one-line history: what was found, when, and what treatment has already been given.
A senior radiosurgery specialist reviews the imaging and says plainly whether CyberKnife is right for you, how many lesions can be treated, how many sessions it would take, and where surgery or standard radiotherapy would serve you better.
An itemised estimate naming the centre and the oncologist, plus a hospital invitation letter for the medical visa — usually issued in 2–4 hours — for you and your attendants together.
Consultation, blood work, and — for prostate, liver, pancreas or kidney — a short day procedure to place gold markers, followed by about a week for them to settle.
A thin thermoplastic mask is moulded to your face, or a vacuum body cradle to your torso. A high-resolution planning CT is taken and fused with your MRI or PET-CT.
The physicist and oncologist design the beam arrangement — often over a thousand angles — and run quality assurance on the plan before a single beam is fired. This step is unglamorous and is where the treatment is actually won.
You lie on the couch fully awake in your own clothes, usually with your own music playing. No anaesthetic, no needle, no sensation from the beam. Thirty to ninety minutes, then you walk out and eat lunch.
A discharge summary with the full dose plan for your doctor at home, a fitness-to-fly clearance, and a scheduled response scan at 8–12 weeks — reviewed with our team on WhatsApp free for a year.
Drag through the timeline. There is no wound, no anaesthetic hangover and no lifting restriction — what you are waiting for is the tumour's response, not your body's healing.
You lie still and awake for 30–90 minutes while the robot moves around you and pauses to re-image. No pain, no heat, no noise beyond a soft hum. Music of your choice is standard.
"It is a knife and involves surgery"
There is no incision, no anaesthetic and no blood. You lie awake and fully clothed on a couch, and the only thing that touches you is a soft mask or cradle.
"You become radioactive afterwards"
You do not. The beam comes from outside the body and stops the instant the machine stops. You can hug your children on the drive home. That is brachytherapy or radioiodine you are thinking of — different treatments entirely.
"CyberKnife can treat any cancer"
It cannot. It treats a limited number of discrete targets — typically one to five. Widespread metastatic disease, diffusely infiltrating tumours and large bulky masses need systemic therapy or conventional radiotherapy instead.
"It hurts"
You feel nothing at all during the beam. The commonest complaint is boredom and having to lie still for 30–60 minutes.
"It is the same as Gamma Knife or a LINAC"
Gamma Knife treats the head only and traditionally used a pinned frame. A standard LINAC rotates on a fixed gantry. CyberKnife's robotic arm reaches non-coplanar angles and, uniquely, tracks and follows the tumour as you breathe — which is what allows body sites to be treated in so few sessions.
"One session means it is not serious treatment"
The opposite. A single CyberKnife session can deliver a biological dose several times that of a conventional daily fraction. Fewer sessions means a higher dose per session, not a weaker treatment.
Last check: does your case fit the 45-second eligibility profile?
Do you have a confirmed diagnosis with a recent MRI, CT or PET-CT?
Are there five or fewer tumours to be treated?
Is the largest tumour under about 5 cm?
Are you able to lie still for 30–60 minutes?
No forms, no payment, no obligation. A senior radiation oncologist reads your imaging and tells you whether CyberKnife can treat your tumour, in how many sessions, and exactly what it costs.
We reply on WhatsApp within 1 hour. Your scans are never shared with anyone else.
120 patients requested a CyberKnife estimate in the last 30 days
Every CyberKnife unit is the same hardware. What differs is the physicist and oncologist designing your beam arrangement and the tumour-board discussion behind it. Ask how many cases of your specific site the centre treats each year.
For an operable stage I lung cancer in a fit patient, surgery is still the standard. A good radiosurgery team will tell you that. If a centre says yes to every referral, that is marketing, not medicine.
Prescription dose, number of fractions, and the doses to the cord, brainstem, duodenum, rectum or lung. Your doctor at home needs these numbers, especially if you may ever need radiation to that area again.
CyberKnife treats the visible spots. If your disease needs chemotherapy, targeted therapy or immunotherapy, the sequencing and washout periods must be agreed with your medical oncologist before you fly.
The 8–12 week scan is the one that tells you whether it worked. We schedule it, review it with the treating team, and translate the report into plain language for you.
Once the plan is confirmed, the hospital issues an invitation letter for you and your attendants together, usually within 2–4 hours.
The e-Medical Visa is approved in 24 to 48 hours for all eligible countries. A regular medical visa takes 2 to 5 working days depending on the country.
Up to two attendants can travel on medical-attendant visas alongside you, on the same invitation letter.
Because planning takes a few days and sessions are outpatient, most patients stay in a serviced apartment or hotel nearby rather than in hospital. We arrange it in your budget.
"Two brain metastases treated in one session. No mask screws, no shaving my head, no pain. I flew home four days later and the scan at three months showed both had shrunk."
"They told me my lung tumour was inoperable because of my heart. Five sessions, thirty minutes each, and I walked out every time. The coordinator answered on WhatsApp even at midnight."
"Prostate cancer treated in five sessions instead of eight weeks. I was back at work in Lagos two weeks after landing, and my PSA has fallen every quarter since."
CyberKnife is not a knife and there is no incision, no anaesthetic and no blood. It is a compact linear accelerator mounted on the same kind of six-axis robotic arm used to build cars, firing narrow beams of radiation from up to 1,600 different angles. Each beam is weak enough to pass harmlessly through healthy tissue; where hundreds of them cross, inside the tumour, the dose is high enough to destroy it. What makes it different from every other radiotherapy machine is that it watches you during treatment: X-ray cameras image your skeleton or implanted markers every few seconds, and the robot physically moves to follow the tumour as your lungs rise and fall. Nothing is clamped to your skull, and you lie still and awake, usually listening to your own music.
No forms, no payment, no obligation. A senior radiation oncologist reads your imaging and tells you whether CyberKnife can treat your tumour, in how many sessions, and exactly what it costs.
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