Ron Black had a cancerous tumor removed from his small bowel. He's now one of about 100 patients participating in a clinical study exploring a new radiation treatment called V-MAT.

"Ron's scan shows that there's a high risk of cancer being left behind. We're trying to treat that," said Dr. Vivek Mehta.

The new technology is formally called Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy, or V-MAT for short. It delivers more radiation with greater precision in a shorter amount of time.

"The time really is the significant thing, I think. As a patient, you notice, instead of me being in there for 40 minutes, by the time they do the scans and everything, I was in there maybe 15 minutes," said Black.

Dr. Vivek Mehta used the technology to avoid damaging Black's healthy tissue around the treatment area.

"What V-MAT enables us to do is, since we're coming from a full arc all the way around the patient, we're able to really lower the dose that the liver is seeing or the small bowel is seeing, while concentrating the dose right here," said Mehta. "It's like thousands or millions of beam lets just concentrated on that area."

The patient is placed in the same position for every treatment. Then the radiation beam is delivered from many different angles to avoid damaging healthy cells.

"The reality is there is no safe dose of radiation so, as much as we can concentrate it where we want it to go, and keep it away from everything else, that's a huge benefit to our patients," said Mehta.

Black has more treatments ahead but says he's side-effect free. Doctors believe this new technology will be useful in treating cancer from head to toe, from tumors in the brain, esophagus and GI area, to gynecological and prostate malignancies.